Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Announces Actions to Get Americans the Best Prices in the World for Prescription Drugs

July 31, 2025 - The White House

REDUCING DRUG PRICES FOR AMERICANS AND TAXPAYERS: Today, President Donald J. Trump sent letters to leading pharmaceutical manufacturers outlining the steps they must take to bring down the prices of prescription drugs in the United States to match the lowest price offered in other developed nations (known as the most-favored-nation, or MFN, price). The steps include:

• Calling on manufacturers to provide MFN prices to every single Medicaid patient.
• Requiring manufacturers to stipulate that they will not offer other developed nations better prices for new drugs than prices offered in the United States.
• Providing manufacturers with an avenue to cut out middlemen and sell medicines directly to patients, provided they do so at a price no higher than the best price available in developed nations.
• Using trade policy to support manufacturers in raising prices internationally provided that increased revenues abroad are reinvested directly into lowering prices for American patients and taxpayers.

The letters inform manufacturers that if they "refuse to step up," the federal government "will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices."

Letters were sent to AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Genentech, Gilead, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Regeneron, and Sanofi.

ENDING GLOBAL FREELOADING ON AMERICAN PHARMACEUTICAL INNOVATION:  President Trump is taking decisive action to rebalance a system that allows pharmaceutical manufacturers to offer low prices to other wealthy nations while charging Americans significantly higher prices. 

• According to recent data, the prices Americans pay for brand-name drugs are more than three times the price other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations pay, even after accounting for discounts manufacturers provide in the U.S.
• The United States has less than five percent of the world's population, yet roughly 75% of global pharmaceutical profits come from American taxpayers.
• Drug manufacturers benefit from generous research subsidies and enormous healthcare spending by the U.S. Government. Instead of passing that benefit through to American consumers, drug manufacturers then discount their products abroad to gain access to foreign markets and subsidize those discounts through high prices charged in America. Americans are subsidizing drug-manufacturer profits and foreign health systems, both in development and once the drugs are sold.

ONCE AGAIN DELIVERING ON PROMISES TO PUT AMERICAN PATIENTS FIRST: Today's letters are an important step in President Trump's work to get Americans the best deal in the world on prescription drugs.

• On May 12, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled: "Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients" directing the Administration to take numerous actions to bring American drug prices in line with those paid by similar nations.
• Following the Order, the Administration engaged pharmaceutical manufacturers in discussions to achieve MFN pricing in the United States. Today's letters indicate that industry proposals have fallen short, and from this point forward, President Trump will only accept from drug manufacturers a commitment that provides American families immediate relief from vastly inflated drug prices and an end to the freeriding by European and other developed nations on American innovations.
• President Trump has been relentless in his effort to address the unfair and outrageous prices Americans pay for prescription drugs:
  • President Trump: "In case after case, our citizens pay massively higher prices than other nations pay for the same exact pill, from the same factory, effectively subsidizing socialism aboard [abroad] with skyrocketing prices at home. So we would spend tremendous amounts of money in order to provide inexpensive drugs to another country. And when I say the price is different, you can see some examples where the price is beyond anything ? four times, five times different."