AstraZeneca agrees to reduce drug prices in exchange for US tariff benefits
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President of the United States Donald Trump announced a new agreement with the Swedish-British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. About this writes Reuters.

Under the agreement, AstraZeneca agrees to reduce the price of some of its medicines for the state Medicaid program in exchange for a three-year duty exemption.

This arrangement is similar to the deal that the Trump administration made last week signed a contract with Pfizer and is part of a broader White House initiative to reduce the cost of medicines in the United States.

In July, Trump sent letters to 17 leading pharmaceutical companies demanding lower drug prices, and AstraZeneca was one of the first to agree.

According to the company's CEO Pascal Sorio, AstraZeneca will also sell certain drugs with discounts of up to 80% through a special website TrumpRx, which is planned to be launched next year.

In exchange, the company will receive "tariff benefits" that will allow it to localize the production of some drugs in the United States.

The United States has the highest prices for prescription drugs among developed countries, on average three times higher than in Europe.

Currently, the Medicaid program covers more than 70 million low-income Americans. Experts note that it already has the lowest drug prices, so the economic effect of the new agreement may be moderate.

  • In May 2025 Trump promised to reduce drug prices in the US to make them equal to the cheapest in the world. In July, he sent a demand to 17 leading pharmaceutical companies to reduce drug prices to the level of other developed countries.
  • on September 26, he announced that he would impose a 100% duty on imports of drugs from companies that do not build factories in the United States.