Trump will reduce drug prices in the US by up to 80% to match them with the cheapest in the world
US President Donald Trump said he plans to lower the prices of prescription drugs in the United States, requiring Americans to pay no more for them than people in countries with the lowest prices, Bloomberg reports.
According to Trump, the new executive order will reduce the prices of pharmaceuticals in the United States by 30-80%.
Trump also said that prices will likely "go up worldwide to level the playing field and, for the first time in many years, bring Justice to America!"
The US president said he would introduce what he called a "most favored nation policy," under which the US would pay the same for medicines as the country with the lowest price in the world.
According to him, healthcare spending in the US "will be reduced to numbers that were not even thought of before."
Trump's statement caused panic in Asian stock markets. Shares of major pharmaceutical companies in Japan, South Korea and China lost between 3% and almost 9%.
Among them are the Japanese Chugai, Takeda, the South Korean Samsung Biologics and Celltrion, and the Chinese BeiGene, Hutchmed China, and Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceutical.
Americans traditionally pay the highest prices for drugs in the world, a practice that pharmaceutical companies say allows them to invest in developing new drugs.
However, Trump said that Americans should not be footing the bill for the rest of the world.
He also called Americans "fools" who paid inflated prices for drugs, thereby funding more affordable prices for other countries.
Trump did not specify exactly how the initiative would work. It is unclear whether it would apply only to government programs like Medicare or Medicaid, or to all drugs in general.
However, he had previously proposed a similar idea during his first presidential term, but it was blocked in court.
- On March 5, 2025, Trump announced a freeze on all international aid and withdrawal from the UN and WHO councils.
- The WHO said that Trump's decision to suspend US foreign aid "significantly disrupted" the supply of HIV treatment drugs to eight countries, including Ukraine.
- On May 9, US Ambassador to Zambia Michael Gonzalez announced that the US would cut medical aid to Zambia by $50 million due to "systematic embezzlement."
