U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, David Sacks, AI & Crypto Czar and Amy Gleason, Acting Administrator, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attend the “Making Health Technology Great Again” event within the East Room on the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 30, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he asked major pharmaceutical firms to take steps to chop U.S. drug prices inside the following 60 days.
On Truth Social on Thursday, Trump posted individual letters he sent 17 drugmakers: AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Genentech, Gilead, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Regeneron, and Sanofi.
Trump threatened to “deploy every tool in our arsenal to guard American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices” if firms refuse to comply. He asked for every company to commit to his several goals by Sept. 29.
The letters come after Trump in May signed an executive order reviving a controversial plan, often called the “most favored nation” policy, that goals to slash drug costs by tying the costs of some medicines within the U.S. to the significantly lower ones abroad. It was Trump’s latest effort to attempt to rein in U.S. prescription drug prices, that are two to thrice higher on average than those in other developed nations – and as much as 10 times greater than in certain countries, in response to the Rand Corp., a public policy think tank.
Within the letters on Thursday, Trump said drugmakers have proposed potential solutions for prime U.S. drug prices. But he said those proposals “promised more of the identical: shifting blame and requesting policy changes that might end in billions of dollars in handouts to the industry.”
He said moving forward, he’ll only accept commitments from drugmakers that provide “American families immediate relief from the vastly inflated drug prices and an end to the free ride of American innovation by European and other developed nations.” Trump said a collaborative effort towards lowering U.S. drug prices can be the “simplest path” for firms, the federal government and patients.
Shares of drugmakers fell following the announcement on Thursday. Shares of Bristol Myers Squibb and Novo Nordisk dropped nearly 5%, GSK and Merck’s stocks fell greater than 3% and shares of Sanofi tumbled greater than 8%.
Listed here are the steps Trump is asking firms to take:
- He called on drugmakers to supply their full portfolio of existing medicines at the bottom price offered in other developed nations – or what he calls the most-favored-nation price – to each Medicaid patient.
- Trump also asked firms to contract with the U.S. to ensure that Medicare, Medicaid and business payers receive most-favored-nation prices on all recent drugs upon launch and moving forward.
- He called on firms to barter harder with what he called “foreign freeloading nations,” adding that U.S. trade policy will attempt to support that effort. He said increased revenues abroad should be “repatriated to lower drug prices” for American patients and taxpayers through an agreement with the U.S.
- He asked drugmakers to adopt models that sell their medicines on to consumers or businesses, which effectively eliminates middlemen and goals to make sure that all Americans get the identical most-favored nation prices that firms offer to third-party payers.
A spokesperson for PhRMA, the industry’s largest lobbying group, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
The announcement comes just days after AstraZeneca said it has proposed price cuts to certain drugs within the U.S., and that the Trump administration is considering those proposals. AstraZeneca added that it’s considering selling some drugs to patients directly, which is a move that firms like Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb have adopted as patients struggle to afford drugs within the U.S.
Drugmakers are also bracing for the president’s planned tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S.
