President Donald Trump faces pressure from American hospitals and manufacturers of generic medicines so that the medical products of their new tariffs on Chinese imports exempt, thus joining the lobbyists of the great pharmaceuticals who have warned that these commercial barriers will cause shortage of Medications and prices will increase in the United States.
The Republican president imposed 10% tariffs on Tuesday to all Chinese goods imported to the United States, and China responded with their own tariffs. Trump suspended the threat of applying 25% tariffs to the products of Mexico and Canada, agreeing a pause of 30 days after talking with the leaders of those countries. Now, he has put the European Union as its next goal.
The American Hospitals Association wrote a letter to Trump warning that tariffs will affect cancer and heart medications, as well as antibiotics such as amoxicillin from China.
Since 1994, the United States and its main commercial partners have agreed to reciprocal elimination of tariffs for pharmaceutical products and chemicals used in the manufacture of medicines, according to the US trade representative’s office.
In the weeks prior to the announcement of the sanctions, four lobbyists and a pharmaceutical executive, who spoke with Reuters under anonymity, said they pressed the Trump administration to obtain guarantees that their products would be excluded from the tariffs.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
A White House official told Reuters before the announcement of tariffs that any exemption would be “rare and limited.”
Lee: Canada is not yet safe from Trump’s tariffs: Trudeau
Almost 30% of the raw ingredients used in the manufacture of essential medicines come from China, according to the hospital pressure group, which represents almost 5,000 hospitals and health systems in the US. In addition, a third of disposable masks and almost all plastic gloves used in the health sector also come from China, the group said.
“Despite the ongoing efforts to strengthen the National Supply chain, the US health system depends significantly on international sources,” the association in the letter to Trump wrote.
The accessible medication association, a generic medication pressure group, also asked the administration to an exemption, arguing the narrow margins of gain of low -cost medication manufacturers and the drug shortage history.
“Imposing tariffs on generic medicines runs the risk of aggravating that problem, since there is little opportunity for generic manufacturers to absorb those costs,” said Craig Burton, senior vice president of group policies.
Medications cost more in the US than in any other country. In 2023, the United States imported more than 176,000 million dollars in pharmaceutical products from abroad, of which almost 6,000 million came from China, according to US commercial data. This includes antibiotics such as amoxicillin and penicillin, according to a database of the Food and EU drug administration (FDA).
Lee: China rejects Trump’s tariffs at the WTO and carriers warn of chaos
Senior executives of large pharmaceuticals such as Merck, Amgen and Bristol-Myers said this week that the impact of 10% tariffs on Chinese products would not be significant for their companies.
Ireland represents 41,000 million dollars in import imports to the United States, according to the office of the US trade representative Germany and Switzerland are also among the main exporters to the US.
American tariffs on Europe, which has become a production center for complex biological medicines, would be more worrying for world pharmaceuticals, said Morningstar analyst Karen Andersen.
“It is true that many brand drug companies obtain active ingredients from China, but when it comes to the great most important innovative products, most of these are manufactured internally or through members in the US or Europe,” Andersen explained.
“As part of the process (regulatory), manufacturing sites must be approved, and all test lots must be monitored to guarantee the consistency of the active ingredient and the useful life. Moving all that production to the US will simply take time, ”added Trung Huynh, pharmaceutical analyst at UBS.
Building a new pharmaceutical plant and enforcing it with the regulatory requirements of the US can take between five and ten years, according to the PHRMA pharmaceutical pressure group.
With Reuters information
Do you like to inform yourself for Google News? Follow our showcase to have the best stories
