Big Pharma Is Not Our Friend And Deserves Weight of Trump’s Demands

It’s been frustrating to watch conservatives get abandoned — or even betrayed — by institutions that we’ve always fought for: federal law enforcement, the military industrial complex, Big Pharma, Big Business.

Given the success of the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle advertising campaign earlier this summer, we can see that big business has come around.

They realize that it's better to stick with us and make money than cater to the radical left and lose money.

However, Big Pharma has made no such mea culpa.

Big Pharma is not interested in our support.

Despite decades of enjoying our support, Big Pharma was happy to throw us under the proverbial bus in 2020 when the saw the chance to make billions pretending that the flu was the Black Plague.

Moreover, they're routinely raising the prices of prescription drugs each year and justifying any way they can.

Big Pharma is not our friend.

Which is why it’s delightful to see President Trump pushing back on the industry, using his pulpit to bully them to lower drug costs for Americans.

The president is using leverage from his recent European Union (EU) trade deal to lift the burden of exorbitant prescription drugs from all Americans.

Trump’s most favored nation (MFN) executive order, issued in May, is the strongest, market-wide solution for fighting Big Pharma’s strategy of price discrimination against American patients.

Earlier this month President Trump followed up on his executive order after growing frustrated with the lack of action by the pharmaceutical companies by sending letters to more than a dozen companies demanding that they lower the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. within 60 days.

He made it very clear how serious he is taking this issue by writing, "But if you refuse to step up, we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices."

Although the United States is less than

5% of the world's population, we fund about 75% of the global pharmaceutical profits. The EO reads, "This unacceptable burden on hardworking American families ends with my Administration."

One textbook example of price discrimination is insulin. Whereas the average price of a vial of insulin is $98.70 in the U.S., it costs just $12 in Canada, $7.52 in the UK, and $6.94 in Australia.

By guaranteeing Americans the same price paid in peer nation receives, MFN attacks the root cause of high drug costs.

Additionally, pharmaceuticals have historically been shielded from duties in global trade.

As part of the EU's trade deal with the U.S., the president looks to incentivize these companies to stop producing a majority of their drugs in Europe and begin investing in America but stripped them of that exemption and slapping a 15% tariff on them. In total dollar/euro value, medicines are the biggest exports from Europe to the United States.

Unsurprisingly, the pharmaceutical companies have begun rolling out their response to President Trump’s demand that they lower prices for American patients by offering direct to consumer options, but this effort is falling short.

One Eli Lilly analyst put it well he called the direct-to-consumer move "more of a public relations move and is unlikely to meaningfully lower drug costs on obesity treatments."

Major companies including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Roche have also talked about this approach and have even given it a cute name "pharm-to-table."

This is another distraction. The prices that they have announced are still several hundred dollars per month and not even close to what the insurance price is.

If patients do opt for this approach none of that spending goes toward deductibles or cost limits so why would anyone willingly do it?

Another laughable approach also comes from Eli Lilly that says they will just raise drug prices in Europe to make prices lower in the U.S. Even if they raise the list price the actual price that European patients will be paying will still be much lower than Americans and will still have little impact on costs for patients.

The Trump administration is smart enough to look through these types of machinations and demand real action for patients.

But to avoid the kind of accountability the president is demanding, Big Pharma is playing a political shell game where they’re shifting blame to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) who negotiate between the industry and insurance companies for lower prices.

Since 2023, Big Pharma has spent more than $20 million on public relations campaigns attacking PBMs, alongside aggressive lobbying efforts both in Washington and throughout the nation.

This is the wrong strategy. President Trump is right by attempting to force Big Pharma to cease charging exorbitant prices for needed medications and treatments.

Hopefully, the end result will be savings for consumers, and a lowering of the deficit.

Big Pharma is not really on our side as consumers, even if they end up hiring Sydney Sweeney.

Jared Whitley is a longtime politico who has worked in the US Senate, White House, and defense industry. He has an MBA from Hult business school in Dubai, and in 2024 he won the Top of the Rockies best columnist award. Read Jared Whitley's Reports — More Here.