Pharmacist inventory most common medication for targeted Trump tariffs: shots

In a tariff war, hundreds of amber -colored plastic bottles are in rows, the defense wall of a man in a tariff war in a pharmacy by Salt Lake City.

The independent pharmacist Benjamin Jolley and his colleagues fear that the tariffs that aim to bring drug production to the USA could instead bring companies out of business while increasing prices and creating more of the shortage of drugs that have plagued American patients for several years.

Jolley bought the most expensive large bottles worth six months, hoping to protect his business from the 10% of the total tariffs for imported goods that President Trump announced on April 2. Now there is a risk of additional tariffs that aim against pharmaceuticals.

In principle, Jolley said, the tariffs to drive China and India to the United States. In war, China could quickly stop all exports to the United States.

“I understand the reasons for tariffs. I'm not sure if we will do it right,” said Jolley. “And I am definitely sure that it will increase the price I will pay my supplier.”

Independent pharmacists like Jolley are on the front of a tariff tower. Almost everyone all over the line – drug manufacturers, pharmacies, wholesalers and middlemen – rejects the most tariffs.

Damage to medication could trigger experts widespread bottlenecks, so that America's dependence on Chinese and Indian chemical ingredients that form the critical building blocks of many medication. Industry officials warn that steep tariffs could make medication more expensive on raw materials and finished pharmaceuticals.

“Large ships do not change the course overnight,” said Robin Feldman, a professor of UC Law San Francisco, who writes about problems with prescription drugs. “Even if companies oblige to bring the production facility home, it takes time to get it up and forth. The key will be to avoid consumers in the industry and the pain.”

On April 8, Trump said that he would soon announce “a large tariff for pharmaceuticals”, which has been largely delicate in the United States for 30 years.

“If you hear that, you will leave China,” he said. The United States imported medication worth 213 billion US dollars – from China, but also from India, Europe and other areas.

Trump's statement sent drug makers who tried to find out whether he was serious and whether some tariffs would be more closely raised, since many parts of the US drug chain are fragile, drug shortage is common and on the way to the FDA -FDA questions is appropriate to inspect factories and lead quality problems to supply chain crises.

On May 12, Trump signed an executive regulation in which the drug manufacturers were asked to reduce prices that the Americans pay for the recipes in order to reconcile them in other countries.

In the meantime, pharmacists even forecast the 10% tariffs that Trump demanded that a potential increase of up to 30 cents per bottle is not a ransom, but it adds up when they are a small pharmacy that fills up 50,000 recipes per year.

“The only word I would say to describe tariffs is' uncertainty,” said Scott Pace, pharmacist and co -owner of the Kavanaugh Pharmacy in Little Rock, Ark.

The medication that his pharmacy sold was the most sold to the fluctuations in the weather price.

“I identified the top 200 generics in my business and basically put 90 days on the shelf as a starting point,” he said. “These are the diabetes medication, the blood pressure medication, the antibiotics – the things I know from which they are more sick.”

Pace said the tariffs could be the death for the many independent pharmacies who exist on “razor-thin margins”-unless the reimbursements rise to keep up at higher costs.

In contrast to other retailers, pharmacies cannot pass on such costs to patients. Your payments are determined by health insurers and pharmacies performance managers who largely have insurance conglomerates who act as intermediate traders between pharmaceutical manufacturers and buyers.

Neal Smoller, who employs 15 employees in his village pharmacist in Woodstock, NY, is not optimistic.

“It is not as if they are going back and say that their 10% bump is because of the 10% tariff,” he said. “The costs will increase and then the sluggish answers from the PBMS – you will lead to losing money faster than we are already.”

Smoller, who said he had built a niche that sold vitamins and nutritional supplements, fears that FDA shots will mean fewer federal inspections and security controls.

“I am worried that our pharmaceutical industry will be like our supplementary industry, in which it is the wild west,” he said.

In some cases, narrow -focused tariffs could work, said Marta Wosińska, Senior Fellow at the Center on Health Policy of the Brookings Institution. For example, while pharmaceutical manufacturing systems can cost $ 1 billion and three to five years, it would be relatively cheap to build a syringe factory-a Business American manufacturer, which was abandoned during the Covid 19 pandemic because China put its products here, said Wosińska.

It is not surprising that giants like Novartis and Eli Lilly Trump have promised that they will invest billions in US plants, she said, since a large part of their final drug is produced here or in Europe, in which governments are negotiating against drug prices. The industry uses Trump's tariff rattles as a lever. In a letter dated April 11, 32 pharmaceutical companies demanded the European governments that they are exposed to more or an exodus to the United States.

Brandon Daniels, CEO of Supply Chain Company Exiger, is optimistic about tariffs. He believes that they could help to bring chemical production back to the United States, which, if it was increased with increasing use of automation, would reduce the work advantages of China and India.

“You have real estate in North Texas that are cheaper than real estate in Shenzhen in Shenzhen,” he said at a business conference on April 25 in Washington and referred to a large Chinese Chinese production center.

But Wosińska said that no tariffs would force generic manufacturers who are responsible for 90% of the US regulations to build new factories in the US payment structures, and the competition would make it an economic suicide, she said.

Several US generic companies have registered bankruptcy or US factories in the past ten years, said John Murphy, CEO of the Association for Accessible Medicines, the Generics Trade Group. The reversal of these trends is not easy and the tariffs will not do it, he said.

“There is no magical level of tariffs that magically encourage you to get to the USA,” he said. “There is no room to make a billion dollar investment in a domestic facility if you lose money with every dose that you sell on the US market.”

His group tried to explain this complexity to Trump officials and hopes that the message will get through. “We are not Phrma,” said Murphy, referring to the mighty trading group, which mainly represents manufacturers of marksmen. “I don't have the resources to go to Mar-A-Lago to speak to the president myself.”

Many of the active ingredients in American drugs are imported. Fresenius Kabi, a German company with institutions in eight US states to produce or distribute sterile injection values ​​-important hospital medication for cancer and other diseases -in a letter to the US trade representative Jamieson Greer, complained that tariffs on these raw materials could lead to a paradoxical way that the finished product production is overseas.

Fresenius Kabi also produces biosimilars, the generic forms of expensive biological medication such as Humira and Stelara. The United States are usually the last developed country in which biosimilars appear on the market due to laws that are more generous for the original patent owners.

Customs on Biosimilars from Übersee-Wo Fresenius such medication further stimulate the use of more expensive brand biologics, according to the letter dated March 11. Biosimilars that can cost a tenth of the original pharmaceutical price start an average of three to four years later in the USA than in Canada or Europe.

The European countries not only pay cheaper knock-off medication faster, but also pay far less than the United States for branded products. Paradoxically, the same countries pay more for generics.

The European governments tend tend to tend to be more stable contracts with generic manufacturers, while in the United States the “rabies competition” reduces the prices so far that a manufacturer may expect product quality in product quality, “said John Barkett, member of the domestic policy of the White House in Biden Administration.

As a result, Wosińska said: “Without exceptions or other measures, I really worry about tariffs that cause drug deficiency.”

Smoller, the New York pharmacist, sees no advantage of tariffs.

“How did I solve the problem of looking after my community,” he said, “but not subject to the emotional roller coaster, which distributes hundreds of recipes per day and observes how each one of them benefits a loss or 12 cents?”

Kff Health News is a national news editor Kff – The independent source of health policy research, survey and journalism.