Trump announces 100% tariffs on pharmaceuticals unless drug makers are building U.S. factories

[Wiz Imp]

1. More proof of his stupidity.

https://phrma.org/policy-issues/research-development/biopharmaceutical-manufacturing

Setting up the manufacturing capacity and all the pieces that go with it is a complex and lengthy process. Building a new manufacturing facility, for example, can cost up to $2 billion and take 5 to 10 years before it is operational, including the time and costs related to comply with various regulatory requirements. Expanding existing facilities and transferring a single product to a new manufacturing site isn’t any simpler. It requires process transfer and scale-up, validation, stability protocols and regulatory filings, which can take several years. Investments by biopharmaceutical companies are used to build, expand or upgrade facilities to supply the next generation of cutting-edge therapies in America. As companies have added new manufacturing lines and expanded existing ones to increase production capacity, the number of biopharmaceutical manufacturing plants has grown in recent years, now numbering 1,556 facilities across 48 states and Puerto Rico. Further, nearly 20% of these new facilities are manufacturing active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), which are the ingredients that produce a medicine’s intended health effects.

In the meantime about 90% of all pharmaceuticals are imported, including very close to 100% of generic drugs. Applying a 100% tariff to imported drugs will cause prices to skyrocket. Not only will Trump fail to drop drug prices by 1500% ( ), there will be no way to get prices to drop at all. Is he trying to make sure that many/most pharmaceuticals become completely unavailable in the US?