The president of the United States, Donald Trump, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Tuesday, July 8, 2025.
Aaron Schwartz | Bloomberg | Getty images
President Donald Trump threatened Tuesday with imposing up to 200% of tariffs on pharmaceutical products imported to the United States “very soon.”
“They will be tariffs at a very high rate, such as 200%,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting.
But he suggested that these taxes would not immediately take effect, saying that “people will give people about a year, a year and a half.”
“We will give you a certain period of time to perform their performance together,” Trump said, apparently referring to drug manufacturers that bring manufacturing to the United States back
Details about pharmaceutical rates “will come to the end of the month,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to CNBC after the cabinet meeting.
“With pharmaceutical products and semiconductors, these studies are completed at the end of the month, so the president will establish his policies at that time, and I will let him wait to decide how he will do it,” Lutnick said.
The president has repeatedly threatened and then has changed course in rates proposals, so there is no guarantee of establishing pharmaceutical tariffs at the rate of 200%. Pharmaceutical actions did not change to a large extent after Trump's comments.
In a note on Tuesday, the Leadck Partners analyst, David Risinger, said he believes that the announcement is positive for the industry “because tariffs will not be implemented immediately … and it is not clear if the administration will continue in the future.”
It is Trump's most significant comment on the specific pharmaceutical rates since April, when his administration initiated a so -called section 232 on those products. This legal authority allows the Secretary of Commerce to investigate the impact of imports on national security.
These planned tariffs would give a long -awaited coup to pharmaceutical companies, many of which have delayed and warned that taxes could increase costs, dissuade investments in the US. UU. And interrupt the medication supply chain, putting patients at risk. The industry is already browsing the consequences of Trump's drug policies, which drug manufacturers argue threatening both their results and their ability to invest in research and development.
Trump has said that tariffs will encourage pharmaceutical companies to transfer manufacturing operations to the United States. Eli Lilly, Johnson and Johnson, Abbot And others are already putting more money in the US. UU. After the manufacture of domestic drugs has been drastically reduced in recent decades.
PHRMA, the largest lobbying group in the industry in the United States, reiterated an earlier statement that retreces pharmaceutical tariffs.
“Every dollar spent on rates is a dollar that cannot be invested in US manufacturing or in the development of future treatments and priests for patients,” said Alex Schriver, senior vice president of PHRMA public affairs, in the statement.
“The industry shares the objective of President Trump to revitalize US manufacturing and has recently announced hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in the United States, but placing drug tariffs would be counterproductive for these efforts,” he continued. “Historically, medications have been exempt from tariffs because they can increase costs and cause shortage.”
