President Donald Trump has written to 17 of the world’s biggest drugmakers, including Eli Lilly $LLY, Novo Nordisk, and Pfizer $PFE, demanding they slash prices for U.S. consumers.
In letters posted on his Truth Social website, Trump called on the pharmaceutical giants to match the lowest price offered to other developed nations, giving them 60 days to do it.
He said the demands would apply to existing drugs that are already offered to Medicaid patients. He also sought a guarantee that future products would be launched at prices level with those found overseas.
The letters are effectively an extension of an executive order signed in May, known as the “most favored nation” policy. The scheme aims to bring down drug prices by tying charges in the U.S. to lower ones abroad.
Prescription drug prices in the U.S. are often two to three times higher on average than those in other developed nations, according to the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund.
Trump posted the individual letters he sent to 17 drugmakers: AbbVie, Amgen $AMGN, AstraZeneca $AZN, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb $BMY, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Genentech, Gilead $GILD, GSK, Johnson & Johnson $JNJ, Merck $MRK, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Regeneron $REGN, and Sanofi.
“Moving forward, the only thing I will accept from drug manufacturers is a commitment that provides 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,” he wrote.
Trump added that companies must negotiate harder with “foreign freeloading nations” and said U.S. trade policy would aim to support them.
Any money companies earn from higher prices in Europe and elsewhere would have to be repatriated to the U.S. to lower prices for Americans.
He also said drugmakers must adopt models that allow U.S. consumers to buy the drugs directly, a process designed to cut out middlemen and get the same prices manufacturers offer to third-party buyers.
Trump wrote that he would “deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices” if companies did not comply.
“Americans are demanding lower drug prices, and they need them today. Other nations have been freeloading on U.S. innovation for far too long; it is time they pay their fair share,” he said.