Donald Trump has announced that he will sign a major executive order aimed at drastically cutting the cost of prescription drugs in the United States. He called it one of the most important actions taken by any U.S. president, not just during his second term, but in the history of the country.
In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump said this order will fix what he describes as a long-standing and embarrassing problem that Americans pay much more for medications than people in other countries. In some cases, U.S. prices have been five to ten times higher for the exact same drug, made in the same lab, by the same company. Trump argued that there’s never been a good reason for this and said Americans have been unfairly burdened with those costs for years.
According to him, drug companies have always blamed high prices on research and development, claiming they need that money to fund new treatments. But Trump said those excuses were never fair, and that Americans shouldn’t be the only ones footing the bill. He also took a jab at the political system, saying that large donations from drug companies have helped keep these high prices in place — but not with him, and not with the Republican Party now.
The executive order will reportedly lower drug prices by anywhere from 30% to 80%, and those savings will start to appear almost immediately. Trump plans to introduce what he calls a “Most Favored Nation” policy, meaning that the U.S. will only pay the same price for a drug as the country that gets the lowest price worldwide. In other words, if another country is paying less, the U.S. will too.
He believes this move will save Americans a huge amount of money on healthcare and could even save the government trillions of dollars over time. He also suggested that this policy will force drug companies to raise prices in other countries to match the U.S., which he says will finally create a fairer system globally.
Trump had tried to lower drug prices during his first term in 2020, but those efforts were mostly blocked in court. At the time, the changes would have only affected drugs given by doctors, not the ones people buy at pharmacies. Drug companies pushed back hard, and a judge stopped the orders from taking effect.
More recently, Trump talked about putting tariffs — or taxes — on drugs made outside the U.S., like in China. He said that this would push pharmaceutical companies to move their factories back to America, since they rely on the U.S. as their biggest market. If they don’t come back, he warned, they’ll face heavy taxes. He’s confident that this will encourage companies to reopen drug manufacturing plants in the U.S., creating jobs and making the country more self-reliant when it comes to medicine.
Trump says this new plan will help both patients and the economy, and promises to make the U.S. stronger and more fair when it comes to healthcare. He ended his message by repeating his slogan: “Make America Great Again.”
