Trump signs executive order aimed at lowering drug prices for Americans

President Donald Trump declared Monday that the U.S. “will no longer tolerate profiteering and price gouging from Big Pharma” as he signed an executive order implementing what his administration is calling “most favored nations drug pricing.” 

“The principle is simple – whatever the lowest price paid for a drug in other developed countries, that is the price that Americans will pay,” Trump said at the White House. “Some prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 50 to 80 to 90%.” 

Trump said that “starting today, the United States will no longer subsidize the healthcare of foreign countries, which is what we were doing. We’re subsidizing others’ healthcare, the countries where they paid a small fraction of what for the same drug that what we pay many, many times more for and will no longer tolerate profiteering and price gouging from Big Pharma.” 

“Even though the United States is home to only 4% of the world’s population, pharmaceutical companies make more than two thirds of their profits in America. So think of that with 4% of the population, the pharmaceutical companies make most of their money. Most of their profits from America. That’s not a good thing,” Trump continued.  

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL SLASH DRUG PRICES WITH EXECUTIVE ORDER

“I think, by the way, pharmaceutical – I have great respect for these companies and for the people that run them. I really do, and I think they did one of the greatest jobs in history for their company, convincing people for many years that this was a fair system. Nobody really understood why, but I figured it out. For years, pharmaceutical and drug companies have said that research and development costs were what they are, and for no reason whatsoever, they had to be borne by America alone,” Trump said. “Not anymore, they don’t.” 

The White House said the executive order “directs the U.S. Trade Representative and Secretary of Commerce to take action to ensure foreign countries are not engaged in practices that purposefully and unfairly undercut market prices and drive price hikes in the United States.

“The Order instructs the Administration to communicate price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers to establish that America, the largest purchaser and funder of prescription drugs in the world, gets the best deal,” the White House said.

“The Secretary of Health and Human Services will establish a mechanism through which American patients can buy their drugs directly from manufacturers who sell to Americans at a ‘Most-Favored-Nation’ price, bypassing middlemen,” the White House added. “If drug manufacturers fail to offer most-favored-nation pricing, the Order directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to: (1) propose rules that impose most-favored-nation pricing; and (2) take other aggressive measures to significantly reduce the cost of prescription drugs to the American consumer and end anticompetitive practices.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, said alongside Trump, “I never thought that this would happen in my lifetime.”

“I have a couple of kids who are Democrats, are big Bernie Sanders fans. And when I told them that this was going to happen, they had tears in their eyes. Because they thought, this is never going to happen,” he said. “And we finally have a president who is willing to stand up for the American people.” 

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Trump said earlier this morning that drug prices would be “cut by 59%.” 

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) trade group opposes the order, saying, “This Foreign First Pricing scheme is a bad deal for American patients.” 

“Importing foreign prices will cut billions of dollars from Medicare with no guarantee that it helps patients or improves their access to medicines,” the group’s president, Stephen Ubl, said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital. “It will jeopardize the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America, making us more reliant on China for innovative medicines.” 

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“To lower costs for Americans, we need to address the real reasons U.S. patients are paying more for their medicines. We are the only country in the world that lets PBMs, insurers and hospitals take 50% of every dollar spent on medicines,” Ubl also said. “In fact, hospital markups in 340B and the rebates and fees paid to middlemen in the U.S. often exceed the total cost of medicines oversees. Giving more of this money to patients will lower their medicine costs and reduce the gap with European prices.” 

Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner contributed to this report.