EU pharmaceutical companies have warned against a “risk of exodus” for the United States while the actions of the sector have slipped worldwide into the rear of the renewed threat of Donald Trump to impose prices for American drug imports.
The actions of drug manufacturers across Europe and India, another foreign drug center, slipped on Wednesday after Trump said that additional carnage was on the way to “reciprocal prices” of 20% on imports that kicked overnight.
A basket of European health care stocks dropped by 3.9% after opening its lowest doors since October 2022, leading losses among the sectoral indices on the Stoxx 600 on a regional scale, down 2.3% at the start of negotiation on Wednesday. Astrazeneca’s shares fell by more than 5%, GSK by more than 4%, Roche 5.6%and Sanofi also fell by more than 5%.
There has also been a success in India, where companies such as Teva are among the largest medicine manufacturers in the world who do everything, from brand paracetamol to active ingredients of pharmaceutical products thanks to manufacturing contracts with some of the biggest brands in the world.
Trump has imposed new prices on imports from 57 countries and territories at midnight in the United States Eastern, including a 20% levy on the goods of the 27 EU member states, 104% on China and 27% on India. These have followed 10% of prices on imports from all the countries imposed during the weekend.
Pharmaceutical products have so far been exempt from samples, but on Tuesday evening, the American president told an event to the National Committee of the Republican Congress that he would announce a significant rate on “very soon” drug imports.
Trump said the price would encourage pharmaceutical companies to move their operations in the United States, but did not say when and by how much he plans to raise the levy.
EU pharmacy companies have called for the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to put pressure for “rapid and radical action” to mitigate the “risk of exodus” in the United States after a meeting in Brussels.
The industry trade lobby The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), whose members, including Bayer, Novartis, and Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of the Diabetes Star of type 2 Ozempic, met Von Der Leyen on Tuesday, before Trump published his new threat.
The other members include Pfizer, Lilly, Gilead, GSK, Teva and Merck, representing the USA exports to the United States.
Trump’s latest comments have intensified the development of concern in pharmaceutical manufacturing centers in Europe, including Ireland, which exported 44 billion euros (38 billion pounds sterling) of pharmaceuticals in the United States in 2024, a large part of the American multinational wants to repatriate.
“We are going to priced our pharmaceutical products and once we do it, they will rush into our country because we are the big market, the advantages that we have on everyone is that we are the big market,” the American president told the evening speech to republican supporters.
“So we will quickly announce a major price on pharmaceutical products.”
The EU pharmaceutical industry has remained silent on the threat of prices since Trump’s “liberation day”.
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The first EFPIA declaration, entitled “PDG CEOs alert President Von Der Leyen to risk exodus for the United States,” said that “unless Europe offers a rapid radical policy, research, development and pharmaceutical manufacturing are increasingly likely to be directed to the United States”.
He said that a survey of its members last week has shown that capital expenses, money will spread out in manufacturing factories and that R&D was the risks of front line.
According to the association, 164.8 billion euros are planned by EU pharmaceutical companies between 2025 and 2029.
“Over the next three months, companies that have replied believe that a total of 16.5 billion euros, or 10% of the total investment plans, is in danger,” he said.
He added that the United States became a clear favorite for investment, prices potentially accelerating, endangering hundreds of thousands of jobs among a million employees directly in the United Kingdom and the EU and many others in the university and clinical environment.
“The United States is now conducting Europe on each metric of investors of the availability of capital, intellectual property, from the speed of approval to the awards for innovation,” said EFPIA. “Now, with the addition of prices, there is little incentive to invest in the EU and the major drivers to move to the United States.”
The association presented a five -point plan in Von der Leyen, in particular the strengthening of incentives to locate intellectual property in Europe and the adoption of a global set of rules to make innovation and research and development in Europe more attractive.
