President Donald Trump has reached nine new pricing agreements with drug manufacturers aimed at lowering what Americans pay for prescription medicines. But a growing argument circulating among his allies says the real fix lies overseas, not with US drugmakers.
The case, laid out in a Fox News opinion piece, holds that wealthy foreign governments have long used price controls, mandatory rebates and reimbursement delays to keep their own drug costs artificially low — leaving American patients to cover a disproportionate share of the cost of developing new treatments.
According to the piece, American patients currently account for roughly three-quarters of pharmaceutical industry profits and more than half of global research and development spending, a share far larger than the US portion of the world economy.
What’s already been negotiated
The administration has already used trade leverage to push other countries to pay more. Last year, Trump negotiated a deal requiring the United Kingdom to increase what it pays for new medicines by 25%.
In June, the administration opened a formal investigation into how Germany’s drug price controls have affected American commerce — a move intended to give US trade officials leverage to negotiate different pricing practices with German policymakers.
The opinion piece argues the same approach should be extended to other wealthy nations, naming Japan, France and Switzerland as countries that use similar tactics to pay less than what the piece calls fair value for new drugs. In Japan, it notes, roughly half of newly launched medicines are subject to annual price cuts.
The stakes, according to the analysis
One analysis cited in the piece estimates that if other developed countries paid US prices for new prescription drugs, global pharmaceutical revenue would rise by more than $254 billion.
The argument against alternative approaches, such as proposals in Congress to write
