Posted on 01/19/2017 12:31:12 PM PST by Kaslin
Donald Trump, in his first press conference since being elected president, savaged a number of worthy targets. Blasting the increasingly Gawker-esque tabloid click farm known as BuzzFeed, and summarily dismissing CNN as fake news, were moments that rightly deserve the cheers of conservatives (and, for that matter, intellectually honest people) everywhere.
Further, Trump’s hyperbolic but deserved strike at the politicized CIA for endeavoring to assert control of American politics was a relieving moment both for believers in civil liberties, and for those who are tired of seeing the bureaucratic Deep State in Washington cut off any attempt at reform.
But while these moments have been highly publicized, one particular target of Trump’s ire has gone curiously unremarked: I refer to the pharmaceutical industry. During the press conference, Trump skewered pharma, saying they were “getting away with murder.” And if that bit of Trumpian truthful hyperbole weren’t enough, he announced his intention to use Medicare as leverage to force the industry to lower its drug prices.
While news sources mostly ignored this particular promise in favor of the juicier bits of the press conference, markets responded immediately. Since Trump’s comments, the pharmaceutical industry has lost $25 billion dollars, as its stock prices have dropped.
To this, the reaction of anyone on the right should be somewhere between pumping their fist and crowing with vengeful glee. You see, while the leftist leanings of the entertainment industry, academia, and the tech industry are all well-known, there seems to be a curious disinterest in the similarly partisan record of pharma. This is more than a little odd, given that pharma is arguably responsible for Obamacare itself – unsurprising, seeing as the policy made them about as much money as Trump’s comments cost them – and is a major donor to some of the great villains of the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and now anti-Jeff Sessions demagogue Cory Booker, are just a few high profile beneficiaries of the industry.
To be sure, pharma disguises its partisanship by donating to Republicans as well, but this tends to be done purely as an exercise in turning those Republicans into selective defenders of corporate welfare from which the drug industry just happens to benefit. Those who cannot be so corrupted, such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, or Trump himself, tend to get passed over. Pharma also tends to seek to undermine Republican ideas for reforming the healthcare system – ideas such as allowing competition across state lines, or using access to Medicare funds as even a limited bargaining chip for lowering prices, the way programs like the 340B drug discount program do.
But beyond the pharmaceutical industry’s special malignance for conservatives, Trump’s decision to target them is encouraging for a much deeper reason. That is, it’s part of a pattern of Trump seeking to starve industries with explicit or implicit leftist connections. For instance, Trump’s plans to cut down on outsourcing and offshoring have already substantially weakened the stock of the tech industry, which looks as if it will slowly but surely be forced to bend the knee to Trump. Trump’s education secretary pick, Betsy DeVos, is likely to take a big bite out of academia’s ability to gain no-questions-asked federal funding. Add to this the subsequent destruction of pharma’s inflated stock prices, and it’s clear that Trump’s decision to turn the headwinds of his populist politics against leftist industries is a pattern.
Granted, it’s generally bad policy for the government to pick winners and losers. But what’s notable about Trump’s rhetorical broadsides thus far is that they’ve been just that: rhetoric. No policy has been passed or even proposed, in Congress or in the executive branch. Yet merely by condemning the pharmaceutical industry, Trump was able to cost it nearly as much as its Obamacare investment yielded. Lasting policy changes, where they follow, should obviously be designed with an eye to universal applicability. But rhetorical cudgels and negotiating tactics need no such sense of fair play. Trump’s rhetorical targeting of pharma thus is a rare specimen: a political masterstroke that achieves its goal without policy behind it.
So cheers to Trump for taking on an abusive industry, but also for picking precisely the industry whose investors are skittish enough to deprive it – and its political minions – of billions of dollars in the face of his attacks.
If Trump keeps this up, he might succeed in choking his opponents’ funding without so much as signing a single bill.
I get the general point, but the lost sentence is sort of idiotic. Obviously the markets are reacting to a perception that policies will be enacting along those lines in the future, and to the extent that no such policies are in fact enacted, the stocks will recoup those losses as soon as that becomes known.
No republican has gone after drmocrat funding before. That is how democrats can keep coming back. Drain their funding to an appropriate level for a regional party. They will then stay regional.
Indeed...although you can argue that Reagan did, but Trump knows big picture economics. He can run rings around them to the point they won’t even know what happened until they’re off the teat!
Big Pharma is the only one who can afford to market new drugs because if the huge hurdles you have to go through to get a drug “approved”
In other words, you make a drug, do all the research, then you have to pay the government to do it all over again and then THEY decide if the drug is good enough or not.
With a system like that, THE GOVERNMENT should be held responsible for any bad drugs that make it to the market.
What the government FDA should be doing is being a country-wide repository of accountability information and standardization organization (helping set industry standards)
If you make a drug, you provide all the documentation that you did your own research and adequate testing, and that it seems adequate by an “underwriters laboratory” type scrutiny.
Then if something goes wrong YOU are responsible for any failures.
That would allow small companies to get into the business.
It would also stop the criminals in the government from leaking your research to the Chinese for profit.
1) Campaign Finance Reform
2) Election Reform - End Russian hacking, voter fraud & election fraud.
DEFUND/DISMANTLE/DESTROY (when necessary) socialist/totalitarian collectives, foreign and domestic.
It’s easy to...
live - free - republic
That's funny. I misread the headline for a minute, and I thought that "the Leftist Beast" was "the Leftist Breast." Trump is certainly going to starve those corrupt little babies of their accustomed perks.
Yes, and of course you have a limited patent life, unlike any other industry.
Reagan wanted to do what Donald Trump will be doing but Reagan did not have a GOP Congress.
I am waiting to see what McConnell-Ryan will be doing. Those guys are known fakers. They usually, almost always do things that seem to placate conservatives while actually preserving power in the Uniparty. They are masters at political deception.
McConnell can no longer use the excuse that he has to wait for a republican president. And he will have to put the screws to democrats like Schumer to get the President’s SCOTUS appointees confirmed. I will be watching McConnell intensely.
Trump’s challenge will be leading the American people to hang a sword of Damocles over the throats in Congress until they understand this era of American history is all about massive, enduring, effective reform.
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