Four hundred billion dollars of pharmaceutical manufacturing is headed to the U.S. thanks to the Trump administration’s policies, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Wednesday at a policy discussion hosted by Breitbart News.
“We’re gonna get cheaper drugs to America, and they’re gonna be made here as well. I expect we’re gonna have $400 billion of onshoring of pharmaceuticals. We’re going to onshore, we’re going to figure out how to onshore generics as well,” Lutnick explained.
Lutnick described the United States as a dominant force in global pharmaceutical markets due to its spending power.
“Generally speaking for name brand drugs, Ozempic, Manjaro, things like that, we produce 75 percent of their revenues and 100 percent of their profits, right? Because we are, we are the big payer. We pay $1,000, everyone else pays 150 bucks,” he remarked.
Lutnick outlined the Trump administration’s policy that tied favorable drug pricing to domestic manufacturing: “So the President said, ‘Reshore it, make it here, and take a certain class of your drugs and give us MFN. Then, while you’re building and reshoring here, I won’t charge you a massive tariff.’”
He attributed the deal to “the combination of me and Bobby Kennedy with the looming shadow of President and then the economy of the United States of America, standing behind him,” which he stated “got done the greatest set of deals where we probably save 100 billion dollars a year for the American Medicaid Medicare system.”
Lutnick situated this pharmaceutical initiative within the broader industrial strategy of the Commerce Department under Trump. “These are just huge numbers, 1.2 trillion for semiconductors, 400 billion for pharmaceuticals. They start at the Commerce Department,” he stated. “And maybe no one who had this job ever understood it, but nobody who had this job really understood it in a way that could work with a President who came back with fire, right?”
The Commerce Secretary expressed he is confident President Trump’s policies will work to deliver affordable medicine made in the U.S.
“We have four years to get this done, and let me tell you, he’s going to get it done,” Lutnick said.
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