A pharmacist collects medications for prescriptions at a pharmacy.Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S. could have wide-ranging consequences for drugmakers and American patients, some experts told CNBC. The duties could disrupt the complex pharmaceutical supply chain, drive up the prices of drugs in the U.S. and exacerbate shortages of critical medicines, some health policy experts said. Drugmakers often rely on a global network of manufacturing sites for different steps of the production process. “We are already in a state where prescription drugs are unaffordable to many,” Mariana Socal, a health policy professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CNBC. “Anything that we change, any trade policies, any tariff policies, anything that further increases the cost of prescription drugs, be it in the supply chain, the distribution network, risks increasing costs to the consumer even further and just worsening the affordability crisis for drugs in America that we’ve had for a long time,” she said. Trump this week doubled down on plans to impose “major” pharmaceutical-specific tariffs “very shortly,” which battered the stocks of some drugmakers early Wednesday. He said he would pause steep tariff rates on dozens of countries following a market fallout that same day, but it does not appear to apply to levies on specific industries like autos, steel, aluminum and pharmaceuticals. Trump exempted pharmaceuticals from his sweeping tariffs unveiled last week. Still, he has said duties on drugs will encourage drugmakers to move manufacturing operations into the U.S. at a time when domestic production in the industry has shrunk significantly.But experts said it’s unclear whether tariffs will influence more companies to make more drugs in the U.S. It would cost drugmakers billions of dollars and take at least several years for them to do so, they added. Some drugmakers, such as Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb and AbbVie, may be better positioned than others to weather tariffs because they have more major manufacturing plants in the U.S. than internationally, TD Cowen analyst Steve Scala said in a note last week. The majority of their sites responsible for producing the active ingredients in drugs are also in the U.S., he added. Meanwhile, Novartis and Roche “look more at risk” because they ha …
