President Donald Trump speaks within the Oval Office of the White House, on October 10, 2025, in Washington, as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, pay attention. | Photo Credit: AP
President Donald Trump made the announcement within the Oval Office with AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, who stated that in robust negotiations to achieve a deal, Mr. Trump and his group of officers had “actually saved me up at night time.”
Under the settlement, AstraZeneca will cost most-favoured-nation pricing to Medicaid, whereas guaranteeing such pricing on newly launched medication, Mr. Trump stated. That entails matching the bottom value supplied in different developed nations.
“For a few years, Americans have paid the best costs on the planet for prescribed drugs, by far,” Mr. Trump stated, including that the brand new deal might lower costs to “the bottom value wherever on the planet. That’s what we get.”
AstraZeneca’s deal follows the same settlement Pfizer introduced late final month. Advocates have usually praised the administration’s efforts to chop drug costs, although some have expressed issues that an excessive amount of onus is being positioned on the producers to decrease prices with out implementing U.S. coverage safeguards to make sure such outcomes.
Both agreements, nevertheless, construct on an government order Mr. Trump signed in May that set a deadline for drugmakers to voluntarily decrease costs or face new limits on what the federal government pays. Mr. Trump had instructed {that a} collection of offers with drug corporations would subsequently be coming.
“The tariffs have been a giant motive he got here right here,” Mr. Trump stated of Mr. Soriot.
Cambridge, United Kingdom-based AstraZeneca makes a spread of most cancers therapies. Its merchandise embody the lung most cancers drug Tagrisso; Lynparza, an oral remedy for ovarian most cancers, and Calquence, which treats continual lymphocytic leukemia.
Those medication introduced in a complete of greater than $7.5 billion in U.S. gross sales final yr.
AstraZeneca introduced Thursday that it could spend $4.5 billion on a brand new manufacturing plant close to Charlottesville, Virginia, and its Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, spoke throughout Friday’s Oval Office announcement to cheer groundbreaking on the brand new facility.
The drugmaker stated that venture was the centerpiece of $50 billion in investments the corporate plans to make within the U.S. by 2030.
AstraZeneca stated it plans to achieve $80 billion in complete income by then, half of which might be generated within the United States.
Mr. Trump predicted the funding’s may result in 3,600 jobs domestically “simply to start with.”
One of the AstraZeneca medication was already topic to cost reductions resulting from a Medicare negotiating technique applied beneath President Biden. Still, Trump insisted that Democrats should not “get credit score” and instructed the social gathering’s key leaders might strive.
The bulletins got here months after AstraZeneca stated it was scrapping plans to increase a vaccine manufacturing plant in its house nation. The firm blamed a number of elements, together with diminished authorities monetary assist.
The Trump administration has put up a touchdown web page for its new web site, TrumpRX.gov, the place individuals will be capable to purchase medication instantly from producers, in accordance with officers. Both Pfizer and AstraZeneca will provide medicines by the positioning, in accordance with the administration.
The web site’s touchdown web page options two very giant footage of Trump and a promise that the positioning is “Coming Soon” in January 2026.
It says on the backside of the web page that the positioning was “Designed in DC by The National Design Studio,” the brand new authorities web site design hub that Trump created by government order in August, which is being led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia.
Published – October 11, 2025 09:11 am IST
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