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President Donald Trump doubled down on plans to soon impose “major” tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S.
It comes after drugmakers breathed a temporary sigh of relief last week, when Trump exempted the sector from his big round of so-called reciprocal tariffs.
“We’re going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on pharmaceuticals,” he said on Tuesday at a dinner of the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to several news outlets. “And when they hear that, they will leave China. They will leave other places because they have to sell — most of their product is sold here and they’re going to be opening up their plants all over the place.”
Drug manufacturing in the U.S. has shrunk significantly in recent decades. Production of most of the so-called active ingredients in medicines have moved to China and other countries, largely due to lower costs for labor and other parts of the process, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
It’s unclear what those tariffs will look like. But Trump said on board Air Force One last week that “pharma” tariffs would arrive “at a level that you haven’t really seen before,” according to several reports.
Already, the pharmaceutical industry is pushing back, just weeks after some companies announced sweeping U.S. manufacturing investments to build goodwill with Trump.
