Trump says pharmaceutical tariffs due very shortly

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump said his long-promised tariffs on pharmaceutical drugs will be coming soon, the latest signal that he plans to press ahead with more sectoral tariffs despite market fallout from his decisions.

“We are going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on pharmaceuticals,” he said on April 8 at a fundraising gala for House Republicans.

“Once we do that, they’re going to come rushing back into our country, because we’re the big market,” Mr Trump added. “The advantage we have over everybody is that we’re the big market.”

He has long bemoaned a lack of domestic pharmaceutical production and has repeatedly promised tariffs to bring more capacity into the country.

His administration has signalled that it will use so-called section 232 powers to enact the tariffs, though it has not launched a prerequisite investigation.

Mr Trump said on March 24: “We’ll be announcing pharmaceuticals at some point in the not too distant future. We don’t make pharmaceuticals anymore and if we have problems like wars or anything else, we need steel, we need pharmaceuticals.”

He has already applied

25 per cent sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminium and automobiles

, while launching the process to also enact them on copper. His administration has separately pledged additional sectoral tariffs including on lumber and semiconductor chips, though timing and details are unclear. 

Mr Trump’s sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs announced last week

, which have sapped trillions in value from American markets, exempted sectors that either already have, or may soon have, their own tariffs. BLOOMBERG