While US President Donald Trump threatens a new series of prices in terms of a thrust, Chinese President Xi Jinping also runs foreign investments, including drug manufacturers.
The CEOs of large Pharmaceutical Companies Astrazeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, GSK, Merck Kgaa, Pfizer and Sanofi were among more than 40 international business leaders who met Xi in Beijing on Friday. Their presence gave pharmaceutical products the largest representation of a single industrial sector at the meeting, according to Reuters.
The CEO of Sanofi, Paul Hudson, was one of the seven senior sales officials from different countries who spoke at the meeting, according to the press agency of the Xinhua (Chinese) state. In December, France made its greatest investment in China to date, or about 1 billion euros ($ 1.08 billion) to establish a new production base in Beijing.
The American representative who delivered a speech at the XI meeting was Fedex CEO Rajesh Subramaniam.
XI tries to widen foreign investments in the midst of commercial tensions in climbing with the United States, Trump recently slapped a 20% levy from imports from Chinese and threatened to trigger a new series of “reciprocal” prices on the main business partners on April 2.
In his speech, XI said that “the maintenance of stability, health and sustainable development of China-US relations is in the fundamental interest of the inhabitants of the two countries”, according to a video recording translated from Bloomberg of the session.
“In recent years, foreign investments in China have also been interfed by geopolitical factors,” said Xi, quoted by Reuters. “I often say that blowing the lights of others does not make you more brilliant.”
The meeting with XI intervened at the junction of the annual Chinese development forum in Beijing and the Boao forum for Asia, two consecutive rallies in China have focused on policies and the economy featuring heads of government, academics and commercial. Foreign pharmaceutical CEOs were regular participants in the two events.
Pharmaceutical CEOs have been increasingly walking a tightly striking rope between China and the United States, as relations between the two superpowers began to worsen during Trump’s first mandate in the White House.
The biopharmatic industry landed in the administration’s reticle while Trump has doubled his commitment to increase the prices on pharmaceuticals “in too far away” earlier this week. Even before the planned arrival of sectoral prices, drug manufacturers have raised fears that specific prices in the EU country, Canada and China increase drug production costs, according to a February survey by the commercial group, the organization of Biotechnology (organic) innovation.
At a private meeting of the White House in February, Trump warned several pharmacy CEOs that he intended to impose pharmaceutical prices and that they should bring back the manufacture of medicines in the United States, Bloomberg reported, citing two people familiar with the conversation.
CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla and the chief of Lilly, David Ricks, attended the two meetings with XI and Trump. Merck CEO Rob David, and the CEO of the Industry Group Stephen Ubl, were also in Trump’s meeting.
After this February dialogue, Lilly quickly announced an investment of 27 billion dollars in domestic manufacturing, seeking to build four new production facilities in the United States before Friday’s meeting with XI, Ricks told the Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao at a separate meeting last week that Lilly would increase investments and increase production capacity in China, according to Xinhua.
Last week, Johnson & Johnson also said that it would spend $ 55 billion in the United States over the next four years, including a plan to build three new manufacturing sites in the United States.
But companies have only so much that they could invest, and pharmaceutical companies cannot afford to lose the markets in China or the United States.
The CEO of Astrazeneca, Pascal Soriot, seemed to have found the balance. In the midst of an ongoing survey of the Chinese authorities on its former China President, AZ AZ last week unveiled an investment of $ 2.5 billion in the country with plans to build a global strategic R&D center in Beijing, partnerships with local biotechnologies and a vaccine manufacturing plant.
The investment in China follows a new commitment of $ 2 billion that the British Pharma adds to its American operations, which also covers the extensions of manufacturing and R&D capacities, carrying its Total US investment to $ 3.5 billion by 2026. AZ shared the plan in November, shortly after Trump was elected for its second mandate.
