Wednesday on CNN’s “NewsNight,” network commentator Ana Navarro speculated about what might happen if a tariff were levied on the pharmaceutical brand Ozempic.
Partial transcript as follows:
RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: So, I would say there’s a lot of state capitalism going on here. And by that I mean, you know, it’s kind of what China does. It’s capitalism. There are markets and people are certainly making profits, but you have the state coming into sectors when it’s considered to be of strategic interest. You know, you have the state, in some cases, censuring individual CEOs, you know, disappearing CEOs in the case of China. Here, you know, not that.
But I think that, in some ways, what both Donald Trump and certain candidates, I will say on the — not candidates, but politicians on the left are doing is really responding to a populist sentiment. And I think that that’s the connective tissue here. We are in a very populist moment. The rule books of both parties, I think, are being thrown out and politicians are looking to do whatever resonates with the hot button topics in the population at the time.
NAVARRO: I read last week that Trump was threatening to impose a huge tariff on foreign-patented drugs, which many Americans depend on. And that it was supposed to go into effect October 1st. Did that happen?
FOROOHAR: So, it’s interesting. With the Trump RX plan, Pfizer, which would potentially be open to those tariffs, is supposedly getting an exemption in order to participate in this plan. So, tariffs — and this is a great example of state capitalism, tariffs are being used as a tool, as a cudgel, as a sort of a carrot and a stick for companies as and when.
And you never know when the rules are going to change. You know, it could be one thing today, the next thing tomorrow, but this is about holding individual CEOs, individual companies, individual industries, in some cases, to heal.
NAVARRO: If he puts a 100% tariff on Ozempic, we’re all going to get fat again.
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