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Donald Trump plans to use his executive powers to force pharmaceutical companies to drastically reduce the cost of drugs in the US, despite fierce opposition from the industry and some senior Republicans.
In a social media post on Sunday evening, Trump said he would sign an order on Monday that would reduce prices “almost immediately by 30 per cent to 80 per cent”.
He added that the US would introduce a “most favoured nation” policy, “whereby the United States will pay the same price as the nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the World”.
A similar move was attempted by Trump during his first term in office, but it failed to progress amid strong resistance from the pharmaceutical industry.
The US president suggested that he would now see off any opposition from the sector, despite large pharmaceutical groups and trade bodies having made donations to his inauguration.
“Campaign Contributions can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican Party,” Trump added on Truth Social. “We are going to do the right thing, something that the Democrats have fought for many years.”
Responding to the proposed executive order, industry lobby group PhRMA said “government price setting in any form is bad for American patients”. It added that “to lower medicine costs for Americans, we should address the growing share of medicine costs going to middlemen in the system.”
The group was one of several representative bodies who sued the last Trump administration for trying to restrict drug prices — eventually leading the Biden White House to drop the proposals entirely.
The Biden administration subsequently inserted a drug negotiation provision into its Inflation Reduction Act, targeting 10 specific medicines in a move that was estimated to save almost $100bn over ten years. The move also prompted a slew of lawsuits from the pharmaceutical industry, but most have thus far been unsuccessful.
The sector has also waged a public-relations campaign, claiming such schemes discourage innovation and reduce research spending.
Trump rejected the claims in his post, writing that drugs companies “would say, for years, that it was Research and Development Costs, and that all of these costs were, and would be, for no reason whatsoever, borne by the “suckers” of America, ALONE”.
He claimed that as a result of the expected order, “our country will finally be treated fairly”.
White House officials have reportedly tried to force a drug price reduction provision into a looming budget bill, but faced pushback from some senior Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson.
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