r/Economics • u/uhhhwhatok • 20h ago
News Trump’s Next Tariffs Target Could be Foreign-Made Pharmaceuticals
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/health/drug-tariffs-trump-manufacturing.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare319
u/LockNo2943 19h ago
Why does he hate Americans so much?? I don't think anyone has ever thought that medical prices are low and this is just going to raise them even further.
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u/unknownpoltroon 19h ago
>Why does he hate Americans so much??
BEcause we laughed at him. We didnt bow down and grovel to him like he was a god.
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u/West_Performance_796 17h ago
Some people basically did. he's still going to completely fuck them over
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u/Mackinnon29E 14h ago
Literally all of those who voted for him bowed down and grovel to him daily. He still continually fucks their lives and future over, whether they realize it or not
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u/emp-sup-bry 5h ago
This is the simplest reason and the most likely.
He was used to television, where we made fun of him but he couldn’t hear it. Once he locked into Twitter, he could see the years of mocking all in one place. Then Obama does it in person and a supervillain is made. He’s always been, I assume, a really shitty human, but he’s obviously childishly pissed off beyond that.
He wants to hurt smart and successful people and take away all we care about just like his base, a group of angry Hollywood failures, creepy weirdos that couldn’t make friends and below average dummies that can’t accept that their own choices led to a less than exceptional life. He’s opened up the ability to blame immigrants, minorities and women as the reason these below average creeps aren’t successful and that’s easier than reflection and change.
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u/ms_panelopi 5h ago
Oh he’s pissed at MAGA too, cause they let him lose to Biden. The man only knows how to be vindictive.
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u/Capt-Crap1corn 19h ago edited 18h ago
Because they didn't vote him in in 2016
Update, I meant 2020. Look man... I'm tired lol
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u/grumpyoctopus1 18h ago
Thats not his motivation. The only way for him and his billionaire cabinet members to afford buying up buisnesses and real estate all across the country is if they crater the economy so the value of everything crashes and then the only people who will still have money (the 1%) can come in and buy it all up on the cheap. Then they lift the tariffs and enjoy being the new oligarchy for generations to come.
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u/BlursedChristain 17h ago
He also removed the biden order to cap insulin prices.. demonic monster
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u/i_am_interested2 15h ago
I hadn't heard that. OMG. Why ?
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u/emp-sup-bry 5h ago
Because someone gave him money and then told him to. It made it easy for him, as bonus points, because Biden did that for Americans. He can get bribes and counter another positive Biden legacy.
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u/guroo202569 19h ago
He doesn't hate America silly.
You are great again!
Did you even say thank you?
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u/LockNo2943 18h ago
I'm so rich and have so much money now I don't even know what to do with it.
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u/BannedByRWNJs 18h ago
He doesn’t hate Americans. He just doesn’t give a shit about Americans… but Putin does hate Americans, and Trump is his bitch, so this is what happens.
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u/huehuehuehuehuuuu 17h ago
Probably thinks of the chronically ill as useless eaters, since he called captured vets losers.
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u/WayCalm2854 9h ago
He basically told his nephew and the nephews wife that their disabled child was worthless
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u/euvie 15h ago
Because Obama made fun of him in 2011
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u/soupbox09 10h ago
You see him sitting with vengeance at that correspondence dinner. Everyone was laughing, but poor doony had his orange feelings hurt. 😆
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u/soupbox09 10h ago
You see him sitting with vengeance at that correspondence dinner. Everyone was laughing, but poor doony had his orange feelings hurt. 😆
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u/WayOfIntegrity 13h ago
This is like running on a gravel road and discarding shoes to run faster.
Basically a self goal.
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u/keefinwithpeepaw 6h ago
He literally said he hated America in one of his debates last year and NO ONE seemed to pay attention.
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18h ago edited 16h ago
[deleted]
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u/JimmyTango 18h ago
Going to have to remove profit motive in Medicine if you think this is the right move. Can’t guarantee access to medicine if no one can afford it.
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18h ago edited 16h ago
[deleted]
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u/JimmyTango 17h ago
We’re already exploiting the poor and sick people in US so the healthcare industrial complex can profit so…….
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16h ago edited 16h ago
[deleted]
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u/JimmyTango 16h ago
Life is about picking two out of three things you want. It’s not possible to have it all. We can either have affordable product produced by underpaid labor for profit driven companies, affordable product produced by appropriately paid labor for no profit and likely at a loss for the benefit of society, or we can have unaffordable products produced by appropriately paid labor for profit driven companies. Pick which one you think works best for medicine.
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16h ago
[deleted]
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u/JimmyTango 16h ago
You literally haven’t made that clear at all lol. You just keep pointing out how unjust the exploitation of foreign labor is without any further clarity.
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u/Avarria587 19h ago
Just...wonderful. I work for a foreign pharmaceutical company. Some of the raw materials are collected/manufactured here, but the supply chain goes all over the planet. I am also a stakeholder, so even if I manage to not get laid off, I am still going to lose money on my investments.
I hope the people that voted for this dumbass are getting what they voted for. I would say I would be seeing them in the bread lines, but I am not even sure if those will exist given this admin's contempt for the poor.
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u/shadow_nipple 19h ago
as someone who voted for him, i voted for 1) accelerationism and 2) cheaper prices
and so far i have, cheap stocks, cheap eggs https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us
and if the fed throws rates in the gutter, ill have a house!
all while working for a foreign company that isnt worried about tarrifs
so.....things are sweet! consider me a satisfied voter
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u/NeverNeededAlgebra 16h ago
Lmao, embarassing AND deluded. The propaganda and insecurity sure has a hold on this rube.
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u/Avarria587 18h ago edited 18h ago
A foreign company that isn't worried about tariffs? That's laughable. Good luck with that.
The Fed has already stated they're not lowering rates. If you're depending on lower rates to actually afford a house, you can't afford a house. The interest rate is the cheap part. How much do you think it's going to cost to replace a roof? My last one was $14,000. Do you have that much lying around? It's going to cost more now. My HVAC was $6800 and that was the bargain-bin unit before the new coolant systems came out. How much do you think it's going to cost with these new tariffs? I could go on with other work that you have to do to upkeep a home, but I'll stop there.
And accelerationism? What, you waiting for the glorious revolution to save us? Hah. We're all going to get screwed with this stunt. The only acceleration we're seeing is straight into a brick wall.
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u/OhmSafely 16h ago
Accelerationism isn't going to help you one bit. Cheap eggs, that's it!? Feds ain't dropping them to rates you like either we shall see about that one.
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u/JimmyTango 18h ago
Which foreign company is that? The GRU judging from your profile lol
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u/Limesnlemons 12h ago
According to his posting history, literally every singe claim in his post is a lie.
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u/El_Guap 18h ago
So almost all generics then? About 40% of generic drugs used in the U.S. are made in India, and India imports roughly 70% of its active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from China. Tariffs could raise costs, disrupt supply chains, and lead to higher drug prices or shortages in the U.S., which heavily relies on these countries for affordable generics.
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u/Methodical_Science 19h ago edited 19h ago
It is currently not economically viable for the U.S. to make many drugs outside of Asia.
U.S. pharma companies and the manufacturers that make these drugs have no appetite to make low margin drugs with expired patents while paying U.S. wages to under-skilled (as a whole) U.S. manufacturing workers for these jobs.
This will either: increase the cost of medications and all healthcare services involving medications (which may be enough to tip over many financially tenuous rural hospitals to insolvency), or cause U.S. factories to be propped up solely through artificially high tariffs that would have to honestly be much higher for factories and pharma companies to really take an interest. Or both.
The additional downstream effect for the American end-consumer is much more of the cost of pharmacy benefits supplied by employers being shifted to employees, increased base cost of those pharmacy benefits, Americans having much more restrictive choice of medications through formulary preferences, and much more red tape to get any non-formulary medication approved (if you can).
Also you can’t just turn on drug making factories. They have safety standards, several of which are important and take time to implement. And while I agree some aspects are over-regulated in the U.S., several aspects are necessary for human pharmaceuticals to be safe and have ensured potency. As a result, it can take years to set up production. When hospitals have drug shortages due to supply issues it’s many times because a quality/safety issue was uncovered in a U.S. factory and it takes several months to over a year or even two before the supply issue resolves.
If you wanted to use tariffs, which I wouldn’t advise, I would use a scalpel and not a shotgun with pharmaceuticals.
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u/gimmickypuppet 18h ago
Facts. I work in this industry. We’re in the process of building a brand new plant. It’s not expected to be up and running until 7 years from shovels in the ground. It won’t be fully operational for a decade. And this is a pharmaceutical that’s been around for decades.
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u/throwaway00119 19h ago
North America does need some low margin pharma manufacturing capacity.
What should happen is the US partner with the countries to the south to move manufacturing. Would kill a lot of birds with one stone.
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u/Methodical_Science 19h ago edited 19h ago
I agree, I think the mutual benefit of partnering with countries in Central and South America would be both economically viable and shore up a critical supply chain on this side of world. But that would require a regional free trade organization/agreements if you wanted to do that while competing against India & China.
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u/shadyelf 11h ago
Would be nice to see that move to Canada, though I'm speaking mainly for my own benefit here.
Would require the Canadian government (federal and provincial) to actually put in some effort and offer proper incentives (like what Costa Rica and Ireland have done) but I doubt we can afford that.
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u/emp-sup-bry 4h ago
And would give people jobs in Central America, which would feed the anti immigration goons while moving toward repairing the immense harm done in the 80s by the US that causes refugee movement to this day.
pokes Congress with a stick
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u/throwaway00119 3h ago
Correct. This should have been started years ago and would stabilize the region - less drugs coming into the US. Fewer people coming into the US. It’s a win-win-win-win as Michael Scott would say.
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u/questiooneeir 19h ago
Are we going to see major shortages because of this?
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u/Mike-ggg 13h ago
We're already seeing shortages on several medications and they aren't tariff related at all, so yes, anything that can disrupt the supply chain can lead to shortages. Also, if a price increase is anticipated, there will be a run on them before it takes place.
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u/unknownpoltroon 19h ago
>I would use a scalpel and not a shotgun with pharmaceuticals.
HAND GRENADES IT IS THEN!!!
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u/spiritofniter 16h ago
Ha I am in validation and I can see this. A simple piece of lab equipment takes months to come online due to the stringent validation requirements.
Even methods transferred between sites do not always behave in the same way.
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u/Anklebender91 7h ago
While your first sentence is correct there needs to be a way to get it here.
Remember Covid and the big scare of not being able to get drugs shipped over here(or at the very least fast enough)? It was very real and something that needs to be mitigated.
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u/NewOil7911 17h ago
Putting tariffs on something that the sick people are forced to buy no matter the price.
What a tremendous idea!
It takes years to build a pharma factory. It also take years, after the factory is built, to get it approved by the regulator, because it needs to prove that it manufactures the pharmaceutical ingredient in a 100% safe way for the consumer.
In the stupid moves that are possible, this one is top on the list.
You want to bring back pharma industry? Subsidize the industry locally so that it gets competitive with foreigners.
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u/fastwriter- 10h ago
I really find it fascinating, that the US market takes up around 50 percent of the Worlds Pharmaceutical market share. While the US only represents 4,2 percent of global population.
And this has nothing to do with wealth. You have almost double the Market Share compared to Europe, which has over 500 Million people and round about the same wealth level.
Are you Americans swallowing pills like Gummy Bears, or what?
Edit: Life expectancy in Europe is higher than in the US!
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u/Uncommented-Code 7h ago
After hearing about all these ads for heartburn medication, after hearing about the 200+ packs of advil (or whatever they use for pain relief there) that you can buy at the grocery store from americans?
Yeah I think that's pretty much the reason.
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u/RoosterCogburn_1983 2h ago
As a whole we are allergic to diet and exercise, hence the higher rate of prescription drug use.
It doesn’t help that ingredients the EU recognizes as poison are present in the majority of our foods, but on the whole we are a treat the symptom not the root cause crew.
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u/emp-sup-bry 4h ago
Any reasonable person would look at tariffs on things like this AFTER we have domestic control over supply. They aren’t price dumping to fuck up manufacturing we don’t have, which is the whole point of selective tariffs…they ARE our supply.
I don’t disagree that we should be working toward moving mechanism of domestic production on necessary things like drugs, etc, but this is not that.
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u/NewOil7911 3h ago
I mean, the Chinese did subsidize their industry to price dump the manufacturing that Europe and the US had at the time in pharma (i'm referring to the generic ingredients whose patents are now in public domain).
Tariffs would have made sense at that time.
Issue is, now that this manufacturing is gone, tariffs are 100% counter productive, there is nothing to protect anymore in the generic pharmaceutical ingredients. You're just making your supply more costly for at least 8-10 years. Now, only subsidies on your own industry can make it competitive against China there, and inflict far less pain the consumer - but more to the federal finances.
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u/Maleficent_Match3368 13h ago
There should be a department within the government called "Nah".
Not, agreeing, hatefully.
Anytime Trump does something that hurts the working class majority, the department of NAH comes in and allows him to follow his bad and harmful policies, but no one has to if they don't want to.
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u/wheres-my-take 10h ago
we could just keep him at maralago and the white house and beam in scripted news shows so he thinks he's doing these tariffs and they're working great and everyone loves him, meanwhile no one is listening to him. that would be cool....
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u/silent_cat 2h ago
There should be a department within the government called "Nah".
In countries with a somewhat proportional parliament, these are the elected representatives. The two party system is failing you here.
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u/StrangeAd4944 17h ago
I disagree. I think the reason they were excluded from the initial list is that someone did the math and realized that Federal government is the biggest customer via Medicaid, Medicare, VA, etc. it would negate the purpose.
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u/Mike-ggg 13h ago
Medicaid, Medicare, and the VA are all on the chopping block, so may not apply at all the way they currently do. Patients may be on their own paying market prices. I hope it doesn't come to that, but nothing would surprise me these days. RFK Jr. has already floated pulling FDA approvals on some drugs, so insurance companies wouldn't cover them.
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u/StrangeAd4944 4h ago
Administration of these programs may be on the chopping block but I have not heard anything about benefits reductions with the exception of maybe Medicaid. Do you have sources about benefit reduction plans?
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u/Mike-ggg 2h ago
No, I don’t have any more information than the average person, but I do keep up with various sources and not much is comforting. It’s just too much in flux to make any assumptions, but the few leaks and off the record comments, although just chatter, make me very wary of how bad it could get. There will be and already have been cuts and I don’t think anyone could have guessed the extent of the tariffs or some of the cuts so far. Whatever happens, however, will still be more impacts than if they weren’t on the table at all (like back when politicians didn’t want to mess with the third rail). And, RFK Jr. is a loose cannon with conspiracy views that we all should have the most concerns about.
The total lack of any mentions of efforts to lower drug prices en masse through volume purchases and negotiations since the election aren’t a good sign. That whole topic no longer even being a bullet point on cost reductions throws up some red flags that can’t be ignored.
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u/RaplhKramden 17h ago
How dare foreign drug companies sell us drugs that are just as good as domestically-made ones but much cheaper! This is so unfair to big Pharma executives!
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u/Odd__Dragonfly 13h ago
Very few drugs are completely manufactured in America, it's not economically viable, even American pharma companies have supply chains all over the world. So it's really just increasing prices for everything. And it's going to screw big pharma executives too, with few exceptions.
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u/Mike-ggg 13h ago edited 10h ago
The two things that don't usually have taxes applied to consumers almost everywhere in the US are food and medicine. Trump already hit food with imports from Mexico and other places, but there are still alternative sources not subject to tariffs.
This wouldn't surprise me at all, but it just seems wrong on so many levels. First, medications are already more than many can afford as it is, and two, they aren't something that most people with prescriptions can't just stop using or find suitable alternatives to.
Making people pay a tax on something they can't not buy is more accurately called extortion and out of the tariff category in my book.
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u/Rich-Instruction-327 8h ago
How much do pharmaceutical companies raise prices here. Opportunistically and to maintain company financials they would raise them equal to tariffs but the prices aren't really tied to cost and instead to maximize profit. Also can't they import the medicine at cost and then markup and declare the profit with a US subsidiary.
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u/_Steve_Zissou_ 20h ago
Good.
We should not be reliant on India or China for something as essential as pharmaceuticals.
All essentials should be manufactured on our territory, using our own ingredients.
But, of course, since this is Reddit, somebody is going to chime in and let me know how having our essentials produced by competing powers is, somehow, a great thing.
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u/Salt_Abrocoma_4688 19h ago edited 19h ago
You're using oversimplified GOP talking points. As usual, economic policy can't be implemented with 5th grade logic, with the sole point of promoting ideological isolationism.
There's a good reason we manufacture things overseas. It's called competitive advantages stemming from economic efficiencies (i.e., capitalism). If it was produced in the US, it would likely be of inferior quality and cost A LOT more.
There's no reason to stop reliance on foreign trade partners other than pursuing an agenda that treats all other countries as adversaries for purposes of political posturing.
It's nothing short of rich that Republicans are now against capitalism.
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u/CrisisEM_911 19h ago
The funny thing is the GOP has been hammering the left about "communism" for decades, meanwhile our government is closer to what's being practiced in Russia than ever before.
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u/_Steve_Zissou_ 19h ago
Self-reliance is not “ideological isolationism”.
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u/Salt_Abrocoma_4688 19h ago
As long as we maintain good, respectful and trustworthy relationships with our trade partners, and we're benefitting from their economic efficiencies as we have for many years, then yes, the only true goal is isolationism in 2025.
Tariffs are a solution in search of a problem.
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u/lazy-bruce 19h ago
I would ignore ole mate
He sleeps with a Trump bed pillow. We aren't talking about an informed poster.
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u/soualexandrerocha 18h ago
It can be, as North Korea's "Juche" shows.
https://world.kbs.co.kr/special/northkorea/contents/archives/supreme_leader/ideology.htm?lang=e
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u/Swift_Scythe 20h ago
I will chime in.
Why is domestic Insulin $700 when it is only $40 in the EU ?
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u/blazelet 19h ago
I pay $30 for a vial of humalog insulin in Canada, it cost me $400 when I lived in Indiana
In Indiana I lived right down the street from the company that made it, too.
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u/-eYe- 18h ago edited 18h ago
Aussie prices for Insulin (Novorapid FlexPen 3mL 5 x 5 - Insulin Aspart)
$185 private purchase
$31 for employed Aussies
$7 for pensioners or unemployed
FREE if you've already spent $1,694 on drugs this year
FREE if you've already spent $277 on drugs this year, and you're a pensioner or unemployed.13
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u/Doctor__Proctor 19h ago
Probably because Novo Nordisk is a huge producer of Insulin, not India and China.
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u/5knklshfl 19h ago
Because they pay for it through taxes on everyone.
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u/rintzscar 19h ago
That's complete nonsense. The real reason is that every European country has one giant healthcare provider which provides insurance for a giant pool of people who need healthcare. The larger the number of people, the lower the cost of drugs because companies offer lower prices to get the drug deliveries deal for the giant healthcare provider. If they don't get the contract , they lose out on ALL of it. That creates competition between the drug companies who all want the giant contract, which lowers prices.
In the US there are hundreds of healthcare providers. Some of them provide for as little as several thousand people. When these small fish seek contracts for drug deliveries, pharma companies have no incentive of driving prices down because if they lose one contract it's not a big deal for them. And the small providers pay whatever they need to pay to the drug companies, because they need the drugs.
The US system is simply set up for the companies, not the people because of lobbying.
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u/R0n1nR3dF0x 19h ago
So higher drug prices?
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u/TheHomersapien 19h ago
Hopefully our new factory jobs offer good health insurance. Hell, maybe we'll finally have that "beautiful" plan that Chairman Mayo has been promising.
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u/dca_user 19h ago
I am an economist and I see both sides. And yes, after COVID, everyone wants this.
I don’t know the whole A-Z industry, but I have spent a little time researching the industry. I’ll share what I do know:
Putting aside pricing, its’ production and supply chain issue:
building and maintaining plants to make pharmaceutical medication is really challenging. They have lots of quality control things to do. They often have to have temperature control and dust control, and a bunch of other stuff. So not only do they need people with a specific expertise in this sort of thing, you need 100% electricity and tech to make it happen. So it’s easier and safer (and cheaper) to make the same drug in large batches in fewer locations.
And not all plants can make all drugs. If a plant is designed to produce one type of drug, it can take one to two years to switch it to a different drug. (I don’t know why.)
So let’s say there are only 1000 pharmaceutical meds in the world. This now requires every country to have enough experts and plants and electricity, etc to have 1000 plants.
2) you need lots of resources - electricity and land and great roads/rails to get the meds to the populations.
3) raw materials- in many cases, some of the items that go into a medication, may only exist in a few places in the world. Now you have to figure out how to ship it to 100 countries so each country can put it into its supply chain versus just send it to a few countries that will make that particular drug.
This is not feasible for most countries in the world.
For America, we probably have enough experts and land and electricity and transportation to do it. We probably don’t have all the raw materials.
can Americans afford to pay the price? Right now they can’t. And the fed govt does not do price controls on meds.
There’s lots more going on that i don’t know about but this is a starting point.
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u/spiritofniter 16h ago
I’ll add some to your facts as I’m in pharma industry. You need to also control relative humidity (and in production plants, differential pressures too). The sensors package for these is around 6K dollars excluding the specialized engineers. The paperwork alone can take months to finish.
When it comes to switching between drugs, it takes a long time as the machinery and the methods/sequence must be validated and tested.
You’ll have to do feasibility studies. Then, a validation campaign. Then the actual production. All of these require people from various fields and backgrounds. These are very laborious and time-consuming. Some people even “faint” due to the controls and details needed.
Also, sometimes the equipment is simply absent. A plant meant for small molecules can be retrofitted relatively easily for other small molecules. Maybe for short peptides too (drugs made of a few amino acids chained together).
But if you try to make biologics, then forget it; you gotta build a new plant.
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u/yanicka_hachez 19h ago
I am Canadian, I don't disagree that there are things that should absolutely be manufactured in house (face masks, PPE, insulin, IVs, vitals compounds and ingredients ....) but those things will only happen if there is a carrot hanging for manufacturers and not only a stick. Right now using only tariffs won't have the needed effects.
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u/AtomicVGZ 17h ago
Also Canadian, and this somewhat worries me. I hope our government has prepared measures stem the tide of American's that will absolutely come for our supply of medicines once the prices go through the roof for them.
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u/yanicka_hachez 17h ago
I used ozempic and the government stopped Americans to buy our Canadian supply so I guess it's something they can prevent (or stop)
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u/Insciuspetra 19h ago
It’s hard to price gouge when you can buy pharmaceuticals overseas for a reasonable price.
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u/_Steve_Zissou_ 19h ago
Right.
Unless, one day, China just stops exporting them, all of a sudden.
Like they did with N95 masks back in Covid.
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u/Oldass_Millennial 19h ago
You keep mentioning China which gives away your agenda a bit. China is low on the totem pole as far as pharmaceutical imports go. Ireland is our #1 pharmaceutical import source, followed by Germany and Switzerland, but that doesn't really hit people's boogey man bell as much as China does it? In fact, we have near trade parity with China when it comes to pharmaceuticals. They stop ours, we stop theirs. Nobody wins.
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u/Insciuspetra 19h ago edited 19h ago
I have always wondered.
Do you think Chinese movies have Americans as the bad guys?
or
Does their ‘Call of Duty’ take place in Dallas?
~
I am not sure they fear us as much as we fear them.
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u/Oldass_Millennial 19h ago
I've watched a few of their films. They tend to be more formulaic than even ours are, very much black and white moral of the story thing. They thus tend to be boring for me. More often than not were the oddball sidekick or quirky advisor to the protagonists. If we're the villain, it's often the tired, old movie trope about a businessman that doesn't care about local customs and traditions and ultimately loses whatever plot and is run out of town. Something along those lines. We have the same boring tropes in our stuff here in the US.
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u/Insciuspetra 19h ago
Sounds much less aggressive than we are in our films.
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u/Oldass_Millennial 19h ago
It's been a good 5 years since I went down that rabbit hole but yeah, not as aggressive as we are. Maybe it's changed now. They DEFINITELY left a superiority vibe though, no doubt.
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u/Insciuspetra 19h ago
Good point.
~
A significant portion of the pharmaceuticals used in the United States are manufactured or sourced from other countries. Here’s a breakdown:
~
Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs)
These are the primary components in drugs that produce the intended effects.
• India – One of the largest suppliers of generic drugs and APIs to the U.S. Roughly 30–40% of generic drugs sold in the U.S. come from India. • China – A major supplier of raw materials and APIs used to manufacture drugs. China is estimated to provide about 13% of U.S. API imports directly, but indirectly affects far more through supply chains. • European Union (EU) – Especially countries like Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland are also key suppliers of both APIs and finished pharmaceutical products.~
Finished Pharmaceutical Products
These are the actual pills, capsules, or injectables sold to consumers.
• India – As mentioned, a large portion of generic drugs used in the U.S. are manufactured in India. • Ireland – A major exporter of brand-name and specialty drugs, often due to favorable tax policies attracting pharma giants like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. • Germany & Switzerland – Home to major pharmaceutical companies like Bayer, Novartis, and Roche; they export many high-value drugs. • Canada & Mexico – Some manufacturing is done here due to proximity and trade agreements.Domestic Production
The U.S. still manufactures a substantial amount of its pharmaceuticals domestically, particularly high-value or sensitive drugs, but it’s heavily reliant on global supply chains for raw materials and generics.
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u/TheGruenTransfer 19h ago
I think medicine should be as cheap as possible so everyone can access it. But that's just me, I guess.
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u/W0666007 19h ago
Yes. We know you think that everything that Trump does is good. You post about it on every thread.
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u/RoleLong7458 19h ago
If that's the case then all US pharmaceutical companies should be forced to sell their products at a reasonable price but they instead price gouge us to the point of medical debt.
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u/guroo202569 19h ago
In Australia our government buys our drugs collectively, we get way lower prices.
This last week there was petitioning to sanction our country because this was considered a trade barrier/market manipulation/black magic.
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u/SeedlessPomegranate 19h ago
Paying hundreds of dollars for lifesaving drugs that cost penny’s to make is the patriotic American thing to do. Hahaha. Man, the US is going to be so screwed under Mump
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u/UnabashedHonesty 19h ago
I have no problem with your point. But shouldn’t you plan for it? Shouldn’t there be as smooth a transition between going from one system to the next? That would make sense to me.
Trump’s tariff scheme is like jumping out of the plane while sewing your parachute.
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u/PornoPaul 19h ago
We shouldn't...we also shouldn't rely on domestics only if they're going to be a monopoly. And, free trade.
This is reddit, and I've felt the slap of the echo chamber before. But your take is missing the point. Canadians (used to) drive to the US to buy groceries because they cost less even with the weaker Canadian dollar. And Americans drove to Canada for Insulin because it cost 50 bucks for a months supply of the same stuff that would cost 500, with literally no difference.
Fix the cost of life saving drugs, and people won't need to buy from China, Canada, or India. Especially when it's proven that those items don't need to cost 500 bucks.
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u/Difficult_Phase1798 19h ago
We exist in a global economy. It's 2025, not 1890. I'm sorry that MAGA means something to you that is simply unattainable and, frankly, not realistic.
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u/BlackberryHelpful676 19h ago
Not an unusual take from a Russian shill whose post history admits, "I grew up in the Soviet Union." 🤷♂️
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u/PopularDemand213 19h ago
You don't believe corporations or people should be free to buy or produce goods from whatever source they want?
Wow, you really don't believe in free trade, free market Capitalism, or actual freedom do you?
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u/JimmyTango 18h ago
It’s not. But if you want to be able to afford medicine you’re going to need to abandon the capitalist motivation and likely nationalize the manufacturing process. So pick your poison.
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u/beekeeper1981 18h ago
He didn't need to start an economically devastating world wide trade war to make that happen though.
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u/InclinationCompass 18h ago
In a perfect world, we should not rely on them.
But in the real world, with extreme capitalism and greed (that trump’s enabling), we need to rely on them.
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