The pharmaceutical industry is keen not to let a good crisis go to waste. The sector is in Donald Trump’s crosshairs with steep tariffs targeting pharma imports into the United States likely on the way, similar to 25 per cent levies put on automobile and steel industries.
Trump seems determined to use tariffs on global trade to pressure pharmaceutical companies to move manufacturing capacity and jobs back to the US.
Significant lobbying is going on behind the scenes both in Washington DC and Brussels. The industry hopes to convince the Trump administration that tariffs on pharma imports will be majorly disruptive, given the complex and intertwined nature of supply chains stretching across the Atlantic.
There was a brief sigh of relief when pharma products dodged Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs. Though sources in the industry, as well as those in Government Buildings, believe trade levies on the sector are coming.
In Brussels the industry has used the opportunity to present the European Commission with a shopping list of asks, to keep companies investing in Europe.
A group of 30 chief executives, including the heads of Pfizer, Eli Lilly, MSD, Bayer and Novo Nordisk, warned €100 billion worth of future investment in manufacturing plants and drug research, that had been earmarked for European Union states over the next five years, could now be diverted to the US and other “fast-growing economies”.
Their recent letter to commission president Ursula von der Leyen called for EU regulations to be pared back. Many of the requests are things the sector has griped about for years. Companies have fiercely opposed the way the commission has gone about trying to improve access to new medicines for poorer EU states and new obligations on firms to chip in towards the cost of urban waste water treatment.
The commission is already on a bit of a deregulation kick, with von der Leyen and others constantly talking about “simplification” and cutting red tape. Lobbyists for the pharma sector are quietly confident the EU executive will come around to a more industry-friendly viewpoint. They’re probably right.
