- 5/12/2025
At a press briefing, President Trump explained and celebrated an Executive Order to lower drug prices.
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00:00Before I do, I'll sign one of the most consequential executive orders in our country's history.
00:05I don't think there's ever been anything signed like this, certainly not with respect to health care, nothing even close.
00:11I'm delighted to be joined on this occasion by Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,
00:18who is doing a really good job, I have to tell you that.
00:21CMS administrator, a friend of mine, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is an amazing guy.
00:29You know, I was telling Bobby before, Oz had a very successful show, but it hurt his reputation.
00:37Because when you're in show business, it hurts your reputation a little bit.
00:40It's good for you, but in terms of professionalism and being a doctor, it sort of hurts your reputation.
00:46This guy went to the best schools, was the best, I mean, top, top, top of the line.
00:52Then he did a television show, became a success.
00:54Made a lot of money, all that stuff, but it sort of hurt him.
00:58And you know who I compare that to?
01:00I hate to say this, but a special woman, Jeanine Pirro.
01:04She was the toughest, smartest DA, maybe in our countries, in our cities and states, history, New York.
01:13She was really tough, really sharp.
01:15Then she did a show, and people didn't think of her quite the same way.
01:20She became more of an entertainment person, like Oz.
01:23Oz is not an entertainer.
01:24He's not really an entertainer.
01:25You know the real story, and she isn't either.
01:28She is unbelievable.
01:29She was one of the strongest district attorneys in the history of New York.
01:35Highly respected, very tough, went after the drug dealers at a level that you don't see today anymore.
01:43And hopefully she's going to be, she's given up a tremendous, she's leaving the number one show on cable television, one of the number one shows on television, period, to five.
01:53But they've got great people left behind, but she was a big part of it.
01:57And so I equate it to that.
01:59Jeanine Pirro is unbelievable.
02:01FDA Commissioner, Dr. Marty McCary, with a reputation that's second to none, and the job he's doing already has been fantastic.
02:10Thank you, Marty.
02:11And Director of National Institute of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, who has been, as you know, from Stanford, so highly regarded, and have all been working with us very hard on this.
02:24And the question they would ask, being a little bit new to the government aspect of it, is why hasn't, why doesn't somebody fight the drug price situation, meaning equalization?
02:34There's a term, it's called equalization.
02:37Nobody wants to mention that term.
02:39And I'm not knocking the drug companies.
02:41I'm really more knocking the countries than the drug companies, because they're forced to do things.
02:48But the drug lobby is the strongest lobby in this country, they say, the drug lobby.
02:55It's between that and lawyers.
02:57And they have a lot of power.
03:00But starting today, the United States will no longer subsidize the health care of foreign countries, which is what we were doing.
03:07We're subsidizing others' health care.
03:09Countries where they paid a small fraction of what, for the same drug, that what we pay many, many times more for,
03:17and will no longer tolerate profiteering and price gouging from big pharma.
03:22But, again, it was really the countries that forced big pharma to do things that, frankly, I'm not sure they really felt comfortable doing.
03:32But they've gotten away with it, these countries.
03:33The European Union has been brutal, brutal.
03:36And the drug companies actually told me stories.
03:40It was just brutal how they forced them.
03:42And the European Union is suing all our companies, Apple, Google, Meta.
03:49They're suing all our companies.
03:51They end up – they have judges that are European Union-centric.
03:58And they get rewarded $15 billion, $17 billion, $20 billion, and they use that to run their operation.
04:08It's not going to happen any longer, that I can tell you.
04:11So what's been happening is we've been subsidizing other countries throughout the world, not just in Europe, throughout the world.
04:18The European Union was the most difficult, from what I understand.
04:21I mean, I'll tell you a story.
04:23A friend of mine who's a businessman, very, very, very top guy.
04:29Most of you would have heard of him.
04:30Highly neurotic, brilliant businessman, seriously overweight, and he takes the fat shot drug.
04:41And he called me up, and he said, President – he used to call me Donald, now he calls me President, so that's nice respect.
04:49But he's a rough guy, smart guy.
04:52Very successful, very rich.
04:54I wouldn't even know how we would know this, but – because he's got comments.
04:57He said, President, could I ask you a question?
04:59What?
04:59I'm in London, and I just paid for this damn fat drug I take.
05:04I said, it's not working.
05:06He said – he said, I just paid $88, and in New York I paid $1,300.
05:15What the hell is going on?
05:17He said, so I checked, and it's the same box made in the same plant by the same company.
05:26It's the identical pill that I buy in New York.
05:28And here I'm paying $88 in London, and New York I'm paying $1,300.
05:36Now, this is a great businessman, but he's not familiar with this crazy situation that we have.
05:41But he was stunned, but it was just one of those stories.
05:47And I brought it up with the drug companies, represented by somebody who's very, very smart, good person too.
05:54And we argued about it for about a half hour, and then finally he just said – because they can't justify it – he just said, look, you got me.
06:03You got me.
06:04I can no longer just – they've been justifying this crap for years.
06:08They said, oh, it's research and development.
06:10I said, well, research and development, other countries should pay research and development too for their benefit.
06:16It was just one of those things.
06:17And the other countries would set a price, and they'd meet the price, and they'd say, if you don't meet the price, you can't sell it in our country.
06:26I said, well, then you walk away, and they'll call you back, and they'll sell it in the country.
06:30But now they'll have to do that.
06:31And so for the first time in many years, we'll slash the cost of prescription drugs, and we will bring fairness to America.
06:38Drug prices will come down by much more, really, if you think, 59.
06:44If you think of a drug that is sometimes 10 times more expensive, it's much more than the 59 percent.
06:52It depends on the way you want to analyze it, but in one way you could analyze it that way.
06:56But between 59 and 80, and I guess even 90 percent.
07:00So when I worked so hard in the first term, and if I got prices down, remember, I was the only one to ever get prices down for a full year,
07:10but I'd get them down like 2 percent, and I thought it was like a big deal.
07:13Well, we're getting them down 60, 70, 80, 90 percent, but actually more than that, if you think about it in the way mathematically.
07:22And Farmer has to say, we're sorry, but we'll not be able to do this any longer to these countries that have been so tough.
07:34They've been very tough, nasty.
07:36It's trade.
07:37It's trade.
07:39And Farmer is also very powerful, and the Democrats have protected Farmer.
07:44The Democrats, this is the Democrats that have protected Farmer.
07:46These are the Democrats.
07:47And by the way, I just called the Speaker of the House, and I just called the leader, our leader in the Senate, John Thune, Mike Johnson.
08:01Spoke to both of them.
08:02I said, when you score, you're going to have to score two things.
08:05You're going to have to, number one, score that hundreds of billions of dollars of tariff money is coming in.
08:10But even bigger than that, you're going to have to score that your cost for Medicaid and Medicare and just basically pharmaceuticals and drugs is going down at a level that nobody has ever seen before.
08:26It'll pay for the Golden Dome.
08:27I see the Golden Dome is there, see?
08:29That'll easily pay for the Golden Dome, and we'll have a lot of money left over.
08:34We need the Golden Dome, by the way, in this world, although this world's a lot safer today than it was a week ago, and a lot safer than it was six months ago.
08:45We had people that had no clue what they were doing.
08:48So today, Americans spend 70 percent more for prescription drugs than we spent in the year 2000.
08:56Think of that.
08:56Our country has the highest drug prices anywhere in the world by sometimes a factor of five, six, seven, eight times.
09:04It's not like they're slightly higher.
09:06They're six, seven, eight times.
09:08They're even cases of ten times higher.
09:11So that you go ten times more expensive for the same drug, that's big numbers.
09:16Even though the United States is home to only four percent of the world's population, pharmaceutical companies make more than two-thirds of their profits in America.
09:26So think of that.
09:26With four percent of the population, the pharmaceutical companies make most of their money, most of their profits from America.
09:35That's not a good thing.
09:37Now, I think, by the way, pharmaceutical, I have great respect for these companies and for the people that run them.
09:42I really do, and I think they did one of the greatest jobs in history for their company, convincing people for many years that this was a fair system.
09:52Nobody really understood why, but I figured it out.
09:58For years, pharmaceutical and drug companies have said that research and development costs were what they are.
10:04And for no reason whatsoever, they had to be born by America alone.
10:12Not anymore, they don't.
10:13This means American patients were effectively subsidizing socialist health care systems in Germany, in all parts of the European Union.
10:25They were the toughest of all.
10:26They were nasty.
10:27And I see that.
10:28I see that with trade, too.
10:29The European Union is, in many ways, nastier than China.
10:34Okay?
10:35And we've just started with them.
10:39Oh, they'll come down a lot.
10:40You watch.
10:42We have all the cards.
10:43They treated us very unfairly.
10:46They sell us 13 million cards.
10:49We sell them none.
10:51They sell us their agricultural products.
10:55We sell them virtually none.
10:57They don't take our products.
11:00That gives us all the cards.
11:03And very unfair.
11:04So they're going to have to pay more for health care, and we're going to have to pay less.
11:07That's all it is.
11:08Believe it or not, because it's really the world we're talking about, not just the European Union.
11:12But because it's the world, the numbers are, for the health care company, not as bad as you would think.
11:20They'll make the same.
11:21I think the health care companies should make pretty much the same money.
11:25I really don't believe they should be affected very much, because it's just a redistribution of wealth.
11:31It's a redistribution where it could be the same top line, but it's going to be distributed differently.
11:37Europe's going to have to pay a little bit more.
11:39The rest of the world's going to have to pay a little bit more, and America's going to pay a lot less.
11:43Again, because it's a much smaller population than when you think of the whole world.
11:49So basically what we're doing is equalizing.
11:54There's a new word that I came up with, which I think is probably the best word.
11:57We're going to equalize.
11:59We're all going to pay the same.
12:00We're going to pay what Europe's going to pay.
12:02We're going to all pay.
12:03Now, there may be some countries in dire need, and I would be willing to sacrifice that and help them.
12:11But it's called Most Favored Nation.
12:13We are going to pay the lowest price there is in the world.
12:17We will get whoever is paying the lowest price.
12:20That's the price that we're going to get.
12:22So remember that.
12:23So we're no longer paying ten times more than another country.
12:27Whoever is paying the lowest price, we will look at that price, and we will say that's the price we're going to pay.
12:34Most favored nations.
12:37That's what it is.
12:38One breast cancer drug costs Americans over $16,000 per bottle.
12:45But the same drug from the same factory, manufactured by the same company, is one-sixth that price in Australia and one-tenth that price in Sweden.
13:00One-tenth for the identical product.
13:04A common asthma drug costs almost $500 here in America, but costs less than $40 in the United Kingdom.
13:12So $40 in the United Kingdom, which is where this gentleman told me he paid a small amount for his shot.
13:22But think of that.
13:23So $40 versus $500 here.
13:27That's not even better.
13:28Much worse examples.
13:30And the weight-loss drug, Ozempic, costs ten times more in the United States than in the rest of the developed world.
13:38Ten times more.
13:38Why?
13:39Why?
13:39What did we do?
13:40Suckers.
13:43But we never had a president that had the courage to do this.
13:47And nobody knew the system like I do.
13:49I mean, I've gotten to know the system so well.
13:53And I don't think it's fair that it benefits Obamacare.
13:56Obamacare is a failure.
13:57It's not a good health care.
14:00It works.
14:01I made it work.
14:02I had an obligation to make it work or an obligation to let it die.
14:07I chose that we had to make it work.
14:09I had to make it as good as possible.
14:11And I had a choice.
14:14I could have let it fail or make it as good as possible.
14:17As good as possible means it was still not very good, but it survived.
14:21And we did the right thing.
14:23But this makes it – this makes everything work.
14:27And I don't want to have a bad form of health care work because of the fact I was able to cut drug prices by 80 or 90 percent.
14:36So we're going to maybe come up with something.
14:38I think this gives the Republicans a chance to actually do a health care that's much better than Obamacare and for less money, which you guys would work on that along with Congress.
14:48But I do want to say that Democrats could have done this a long time ago.
14:52They have fought like hell for the drug companies, and they knew they were doing the wrong thing.
14:57And it's going to be very hard – I was just telling the leader and the speaker that it's going to be very hard for the Democrats to vote against the one big, beautiful deal, the greatest tax cuts in history, greatest everything.
15:13But now you have the big drug prices because that's going to be included.
15:16It makes that whole situation different from a scoring standpoint.
15:22I just told them.
15:23I called them up about this.
15:24I said, I'm going to do something that's going to be very monumental, and you're going to be scoring.
15:30You better tell your people that this is going to score really well.
15:33And then add hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs to your list also.
15:40But as big as the tariffs are, this is something that really hits quickly.
15:43Five years ago, I signed an executive order to confront this disaster, but only confront it in a minor way.
15:52It was a good confrontation, but never to this extent.
15:56It took people a little while to understand a very complicated system.
16:01But Joe Biden, without any knowledge of what he was doing, terminated the policy and then pretended to negotiate under a new system.
16:09And then you take a look, five out of the ten drugs that he negotiated are now over 200 percent more expensive in America than the rest of the world,
16:20and far more expensive than when he even got involved, much more expensive than when he got involved.
16:27Joe Biden's plan was, as you know, because you wrote about it, you don't say it very loudly, but it was a very big failure, was his whole presidency.
16:35First, I'm directing the U.S. trade representatives and Department of Commerce to begin investigations into foreign nations that extort drug companies
16:44by blocking their products unless they accept bottom line and very low dollar amounts for their product,
16:51unfairly shifting the cost burden onto American patients.
16:55And we'll be taking a look at that very strongly.
16:58The biggest thing we're going to do is we're going to tell those countries, like those represented by the European Union,
17:05that, you know, that game is up, sorry.
17:08And if they want to get cute, then they don't have to sell cars into the United States anymore.
17:13It's a very big subject.
17:15And they won't get cute, because I'll defend the drug companies from that standpoint.
17:20They were given a price by the European Union and other countries.
17:24This is what you do.
17:26This is what we're going to pay.
17:27We're not going to pay any more.
17:29Let America pay the difference, because it was a big shortfall.
17:32Let America pay it.
17:34And that's what we did.
17:35But we're not doing it anymore.
17:37Next, my administration will secure what we're calling most favored nations, drug pricing.
17:42The principle is simple.
17:44Whatever the lowest price paid for a drug in other developed countries, that is the price that Americans will pay.
17:49And we're using the term other developed countries, because there are some countries that need some additional help.
17:56And that's fine.
17:57I think that's very good.
17:59Some prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 50 to 80 to 90 percent.
18:07Big Pharma will either abide by this principle voluntarily or will use the power of the federal government to ensure that we are paying the same price as other countries.
18:17To accelerate these price restrictions and reductions, my administration will also cut out the middlemen.
18:25We're going to totally cut out the famous middlemen.
18:27Nobody knows who they are.
18:29Middlemen, I've been hearing the term for 25 years.
18:31Middlemen, I don't know who they are, but they're rich.
18:34That I can tell you.
18:36We're going to cut out the middlemen and facilitate the direct sale of drugs at the most favored nation price directly to the American citizen.
18:44So we're cutting out, Bobby, the middlemen.
18:46It's so important, right?
18:48They've got to do that.
18:50They're worse than the drug companies.
18:52They don't even make a product, and they make a fortune.
18:55They've got very smart business people that I can tell you.
18:58If companies make no significant progress toward most favored nation pricing, which we will insist that they do, so I think I'm wasting time talking about it.
19:06We're going to insist upon it.
19:08And we'll insist, and we're going to help the drug companies with the other nations because those other nations do a lot of trading with us.
19:14They need our trade just like China needed us very badly.
19:17They need us just as badly.
19:19And we will do whatever we have to with trade, just like we did some great things with trade with India and Pakistan.
19:27It really helped the situation, a very heated situation.
19:31It could have lost millions of people, more than millions.
19:33I mean, many millions of people.
19:35And they want to do business with America, but we never used our powers that way.
19:44We never knew how.
19:44We never had people that knew how to do that.
19:47We'll also open up America's market to safe and legal imports of affordable drugs from other countries, putting dramatic downward pressure on prices.
19:55And if necessary, we'll investigate the drug companies, and we'll, in particular, investigate the countries that are doing this.
20:04And we will add it on to the price that we charge them for doing business in America.
20:12In other words, we'll add it on to tariffs if they don't do what is right, which is everybody should equalize.
20:18Everybody should say pay the same price.
20:21And special interests may not like this very much, but the American people will.
20:26I mean, I am doing this for the American people.
20:30I'm doing this against the most powerful lobby in the world, probably the drug lobby, drug and pharmaceutical lobby.
20:37But it's one of the most important orders, I think, that's ever been signed, certainly with regard to health care or health in the history of our country.
20:45And it's an honor to be a part of it.
20:46And I'd like to...
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