U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, David Sacks, AI & Crypto Czar and Amy Gleason, Acting Administrator, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attend the “Making Health Technology Great Again” event in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 30, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he asked major pharmaceutical companies to take steps to cut U.S. drug prices within the next 60 days.
On Truth Social on Thursday, Trump posted individual letters he sent 17 drugmakers, including Eli Lilly, GSK, Pfizer, Regeneron, Merck, and Novo Nordisk.
Trump threatened to “deploy ever tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices” if companies refuse to comply.
The letters come after Trump in May signed an executive order reviving a controversial plan, known as the “most favored nation” policy, that aims to slash drug costs by tying the prices of some medicines in the U.S. to the significantly lower ones abroad. It was Trump’s latest effort to try to rein in U.S. prescription drug prices, which are two to three times higher on average than those in other developed nations – and up to 10 times more than in certain countries, according to the Rand Corp., a public policy think tank.
In the letters on Thursday, Trump said drugmakers have proposed potential solutions for high U.S. drug prices. But he said those proposals “promised more of the same: shifting blame and requesting policy changes that would result in billions of dollars in handouts to the industry.”
He said moving forward, he will only accept commitments from drugmakers that provide “American families immediate relief from the vastly inflated drug prices and an end to the free ride of American innovation by European and other developed nations.” Trump said a collaborative effort towards lowering U.S. drug prices would be the “most effective path” for companies, the government and patients.
Trump called on drugmakers to provide the lowest price offered in other developed nations – or what he calls the most-favored-nation price – to every single Medicaid patient. He also asked companies to contract with the U.S. to guarantee that Medicare, Medicaid and commercial payers receive most-favored-nation prices on all new drugs upon launch and moving forward.
Trump also called on companies to negotiate harder with what he called “foreign freeloading nations,” adding that U.S. trade policy will try to support that effort. He asked drugmakers to adopt models that sell their medicines directly to consumers or businesses, which effectively eliminates middlemen.
A spokesperson for PhRMA, the industry’s largest lobbying group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Drugmakers are also bracing for the president’s planned tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S.
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