Donald Trump's Big Pharma Showdown Ends with a Whimper

"It's hard to find things that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders agree on, but one point of consensus is that pharmaceutical companies have long been ripping off Americans by charging extortionate prices for prescription medications. "Americans are being screwed, and it's no good. They're not going to put up with it," Trump said in February, at a White House event."

"In May, he issued an executive order declaring that the Administration would impose lower prices by fiat if drugmakers didn't align their U.S. prices with what they charge in other countries. "I agree with President Trump," Sanders commented in a statement. "It is an outrage that the American people pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.""

"In addition to threatening to introduce price controls, the Trump Administration was preparing the way for tariffs on drugs and their ingredients, many of which come from abroad. Wall Street paid attention to these threats. Between Trump's election last November and the beginning of April, a period in which the stock market as a whole rose sharply, drug stocks fell by about twenty per cent."

"Last week, the President, standing alongside the C.E.O. of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, announced plans for a government-run website, TrumpRx, on which Pfizer would list some of its drugs at prices discounted up to eighty-five per cent. A White House fact sheet said the Administration and Pfizer, the world's fourth-largest pharmaceutical company by revenue, had reached an agreement to "bring American drug prices in line with the lowest paid by other developed nations (known as the most-favored-nation, or MFN, price)." Investors didn't think so."

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both criticized the high cost of prescription drugs and supported measures to reduce U.S. drug prices. The Administration threatened price controls and considered tariffs on drugs and ingredients sourced from abroad, which contributed to a decline in drug stocks despite broader market gains. The White House announced a partnership with Pfizer to create a government-run site, TrumpRx, offering some Pfizer drugs at discounts up to eighty-five percent and tying prices to most-favored-nation rates paid by other developed countries. The Pfizer announcement produced a sharp spike in Pfizer shares and lifted other pharmaceutical stocks on investor expectations of similar deals.

Read at The New Yorker