This news came in the same way as near the previous tariff bombing from the US President – suddenly, through social media, and with a very remaining unclear.
In a post on his social media site late on Thursday, Donald Trump announced new tetfies on US pharmaceutical imports.
“Since October 1, 2025, we will put 100% tariff on any branded or patent pharmaceutical products until a company is building its drug manufacturing plans in the US,” he has written on Truth Social.
So far, Pharmaceutical Goods has been exempted from the so -called mutual tafs by Trump, declared back in April. This was primarily earlier this year, the US government opened a national security check, investigating the possibility of tetf on pharma goods.
Trump has regularly threatened that pharmaceutical product will be hit with tariffs since returning to office in January, so this movement is not a great surprise, even though it is time.
What would this step really mean for drugs companies?
There were two possible exemptions in Trump’s announcement. Hey tariffs will not apply to so -called generic drugs, apparently the meaning of drugs and pharmaceuticals that use the same material and are used similar to current, branded drugs, which are basically covered by chemical patents.
However, Debora Elms, head of the trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore, says the difference between branded and generic drugs is not completely clear.
“There are many branded, generic drugs for example. All this has collapsed together in Trump’s declaration. At this level, what not.
Trump announced that the other distinction is that tariffs would not apply for the company producing drugs in the US or plan to build a factory there.
He wrote that “construction” wants to define “breaking ground” and/or “under construction”. Therefore, “Thesis will not have any tariff on pharmaceutical products if construction has started,” he said.
Elms says that this carving-out could be important, but it has been emphasized that because everyone has a social media post from Trump.
Had she were a pharma executive, she would now “buy a shovel and dig a hole somewhere,” she had to declare that her company broke the ground and was “preparing for the development of a factory.”
“It is not clear what will suffer to avoid tafs. They can come up with a lot of criteria that ether merit or disqualify. I can imagine that there will be a lot of confusion on it,” Elms said.
Neil Sheering, the chief economist of the group of capital economics, believes that the announcement is “not as a huge trick as it appears at first sight” because exemption for firms produced within the US is “more important.”
Sheering wrote to customers in a note, “Many of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies have already produced some in the US or have announced a plan to build in the near future. It will appear to end the subject with a new tapiff.”
Many major pharmaceutical companies have recently ply to start new construction in the US, such as Ellie Lily, Astranka, Rosh Holding and GSK.
A report by American business daily Wall Street Journal Earlier this month, more than a dozen drug manufacturers were identified, promising to spend more than $ 350 billion (€ 299 billion) collectively by the end of this decade on drug and related activities within the US.
Which country wants to be the worst affected?
According to the United Nations Competabase, the US imported about 213 billion drug products in 2024.
In July 2025, the top five exporters of pharmaceuticals in the US as the economic complexity recognition with Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore and the Observatory of India. All US pharma of the European Union are for about 60% of imports.
However, it is not clear how the drug firms working from Ireland, Germany or other European Union countries will be affected. This is because when the details of the US-EU trade agreement were released in the end of August, it appeared that the European Union pharma tariffs would be limited to 15%, most of the other in line with the other.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Simon Harris, Ireland announced that he would “study the impact of the announcement” but insisted that the August Trade Agreement clarified that the tatiff on pharma products would be capted at 15%. “This case remains,” Hair said Press release,
Kane Peng, head of Asia investment strategy in City Wealth, thinks that generic drugs exemption “will be good news for India and China, which mostly do not provide branded drugs in the American market.”
However, Director General of European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Association, Nathali Mol believes that new taffs “increase costs, supply chains and patients from receiving life -long treatment,” as he said in a statement.
After the announcement on Thursday, shares of Asian and European pharma companies fell.
What about consumers?
Trump has long claimed that tariffs will promote American consumers. But Debora Elms argues that for various reasons, this will not be the case, and the patient is about “paying too much money” for the patient drug products.
Accepting that homeshoring pharma production as “some long -term benefits” can be “long -term benefits”, saying that high American production costs means that it often makes sense to be made elsewhere for pharmaceuticals.
So she expects “high costs for US patients,” and imports less pharma from abroad.
“In many cases, they do not reach us to the patient. So … it is the use of problems. What is the benefit of this from the perspective of the consumer?
Edited by: Uwe Hessler