Trump says he will put up to a 200% tax on medicines “very soon.”
During a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 8, 2025, President Donald Trump talks next to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said that he would put up to 200% taxes on drugs that are brought into the U.S.
During a meeting with his cabinet, Trump said, “They’re going to be duty rates that are very high, like 200%.”
But he said that the taxes would not start right away, saying that he would “give people about a year, year and a half.”
Trump said, “We’ll give them a certain amount of time to get their act together.” He was likely talking about drug companies.
Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, told CNBC after the Cabinet meeting that more information about drug taxes “will come at the end of the month.”
“Those studies are coming to a close at the end of the month on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors,” Lutnick said. “The president will then make his policies, and I’m going to let him wait to decide how hes going to do it.”
There’s no guarantee that the president will set pharmaceutical tariffs at the 200% rate. He has made threats and then changed his mind about tariff plans many times. After Trump’s words, pharmaceutical stocks didn’t change much.
It is the most important thing Trump has said about pharmaceutical tariffs since April, when his government started a so-called Section 232 investigation into those goods. The law gives the Secretary of Commerce the power to look into how goods affect national security.
It has been a long time coming, but those planned taxes would finally hurt drug companies. Many of them have spoken out against them, saying that they could raise prices, discourage investments in the U.S., and mess up the drug supply chain, which would put patients at risk. The industry is already dealing with the effects of Trump’s policies on drug prices, which drugmakers say hurt their bottom lines and make it harder for them to spend money on research and development.
Trump has said that taxes will make drug companies more likely to move their factories to the U.S. After making a lot less drugs in the U.S. over the last few decades, companies like Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, and others are already putting more money into the country.
