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America’s great economic waterfall is drying up

The era where the US underwrote global trade and innovation may be ending but the chaos could throw up opportunities for others.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. dollar banknote and medicines are seen in this illustration taken, June 27, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration//File Photo

In pharmaceuticals, the US taxpayer funded research, investors fuelled biotech, and the FDA set the gold standard for approvals.

PHOTO: REUTERS

Lin Suling

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One of Europe’s most valuable companies today is Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant best known for

Ozempic, a diabetes drug

that also drives weight loss and is an object of near-frenzy in the United States.

Since US approval in 2017, demand for Ozempic has exploded, especially after regulators broadened its use to include reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Novo Nordisk followed up with

Wegovy, a higher-dose version aimed at obesity,

which also won US approval. The result: the US now accounts for 60 per cent of Novo Nordisk’s global revenues – a figure likely to grow as Americans embrace medicalised weight loss.

America’s great economic waterfall is drying up

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