Despite President Donald Trump’s controversial tariff-launching “Liberation Day” being just over a year old — and with the legality of most of those tariffs stricken down by the Supreme Court — the Trump administration surprised the nation on Liberation Day’s first anniversary by announcing new tariffs on many brand-name drugs manufactured outside of the United States. This is a move that could, in the short term, radically increase the prices of your medication.
Trump’s plan? To levy a 100% tariff on pharmaceutical companies that manufacture drugs in foreign countries, rather than in America. It’s a policy designed to reshape the pharmaceutical industry in the long-term by incentivizing American manufacturing and price concessions, with large drug companies being given 120 days (and smaller companies 180 days) to negotiate the construction of American-based pharmaceutical plants to avoid the tariffs, per CNBC. The companies would then have until January 2029 to complete the actual plants.
