Amid govt shutdown, US delays 100% pharma tariffs: Report

Last week, US President Donald Trump threatened triple-digit tariffs on pharmaceutical imports, which were supposed to go into effect on Wednesday. However, the White House is now saying that it may not need to impose them for now.

A White House official revealed that the Trump administration has paused the plan to enact the duties, Politico reported. The official noted that the White House is attempting to negotiate agreements with pharmaceutical giants to avoid higher tariffs on their name-brand products — like the deal it announced with Pfizer Tuesday.

The official also directed towards what US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said during the Pfizer announcement in the Oval Office. When asked about the pharma tariffs, Lutnick said that the administration is “going to let [the talks] play out and finish these negotiations, because they are the most important thing to the American people.” “So we are standing by and helping and working with them,” Lutnick added.

The deal with Pfizer

On Tuesday, Trump revealed a multi-pronged deal with Pfizer. The New York-based pharma giant agreed to invest $70 billion to boost its pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in the US and to participate in a direct purchasing platform called “TrumpRx.gov,” where it will offer a discount on a “large majority” of its primary care treatments and “some select speciality brands.”

In exchange for this, Pfizer will get a three-year pause on the forthcoming pharmaceutical tariffs. The president said on Tuesday that he sees the deal as a model for the drug companies, insisting that he expects similar announcements over the next week. However, he threatened to impose tariffs on pharma companies that don’t come to the table.

“What we’d do is put a tariff on them of an equivalent amount, and we take it that way, and nobody wants to play that game,” Trump said. “So they’re all going to be good.” Overall, it remains unclear how the Trump tariffs on pharma would come into play.