I think Trump means add a federal surcharge on shipments of American drugs to cheapskate foreign countries, just as the Canadian guy raised the price of Canadian electricity sent to the USA.
If the US pays $10 a pill and a European country pays $2 a pill, Trump would add an $8 surcharge on each pill destined for that country.
Export tariffs are unconstitutional.
That’s how I read it… except it’s fairly easy to offshore drug production. In the grand scheme it costs next to nothing compared to what the drugs make. Efficiency will drop a tiny bit as would profits ( a tiny bit) but if it costs a few tens of millions to build and operate a multi billion dollar facility in Europe it is worth it vs a 400% increase in tariffs. The only cases where it could work may be where patents are protected, but still the patent holder could build multiple facilities or the host countries could just invalidate the patents. Or the patent could be revoked which would be the biggest risk of all.
“I think Trump means add a federal surcharge on shipments of American drugs to cheapskate foreign countries”
Do “American drugs” even exist? I know we have the Big Pharma R&D here (I used to work for one). But aren’t most of them manufactured in China, etc.?
I know that there is a lot of playing fast and loose with drugs, which creates an unfair situation for us.
One expensive drug I take was supposed to go generic in January 2023. (My CO-PAY is more than $2,000/year.) It was HAPPENING so seriously that Humana had already moved my prescription to the generic. A couple days before the effective date, Pfizer pulled it.
The thing is, foreign countries have been getting the generic for years.