Trump says pharmaceutical tariffs may be coming: What to know

00:00 Speaker A

Well drug makers are falling today after President Trump announced tariffs on pharmaceutical imports could be coming shortly. Yahoo finances, Angeli Camlani is here now with more on the potential levies. Angeli, what can you tell us?

00:17 Angeli

That’s right, Manny. We heard from President Trump last night at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner saying, quote, “We’re going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on pharmaceuticals, and when they hear that, they will leave China. They will leave other places because most of their product is sold here.” He’s right about that last part. The US market is a large one for pharmaceuticals. Um, but there is question, there are questions about which companies will be hit more than others. You can see on your screen some of the stocks that are getting hit, some of the ones that are native to the US and do have manufacturing already set up in the US. We’ve heard already some of these commit to even further expansion, including Johnson & Johnson with a $55 billion commitment, Eli Lilly with $27 billion, and Merck with about eight billion in recent months, in anticipation of this announcement and of the tariffs. We know that they were exempt from the initial round of tariffs that were hit, uh, hitting country specifically, uh, but we do know that also, um, those that are based in the EU, for example, or in, in Europe in general, have a little bit more concern about the impact of the tariffs. Names like AstraZeneca, GSK, as well as Sanofi are among those that are headquartered overseas, but they do, some of them do have some manufacturing here. Also, questions about, um, the general supply chain of pharma, which includes, you know, active ingredients, which are base formula ingredients from China and other countries versus the fill and finish process, which is the end process that takes place here in the United States. All of it a very complex question for these companies. There are also trade groups in Europe that’s already warned the EU that they will see a shift to the US and an outflow of capital if it does not, uh, strengthen its own rules and regulations in the country to kind of encourage companies to stay there. So a lot going on right now. We do now, we don’t know the details of any potential tariffs, so we just have to wait and see what those numbers look like in order to know the true impact.

04:21 Speaker A

Angeli, thanks so much. Appreciate it.