Imagine going to the pharmacy for your heart medication, only to find the price has jumped since the month before. That’s the reality many Americans could soon face if President Trump’s recently delayed tariffs go into effect, costing consumers tens of billions of dollars and potentially cutting off access to life-saving treatments.
After slapping new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, the Trump administration announced, and then delayed, a sweeping set of new tariffs, starting at 10 percent and climbing higher for a broad list of countries. The announcement, especially the sky-high rates on Chinese imports, triggered a tariff escalation between the U.S. and China, culminating in a staggering 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods. While tariffs on other nations were granted a 90-day delay, China’s were not.
These tariffs will raise prices on a range of consumer goods. Perhaps most dangerously, they’ll also raise the price of the medicines Americans rely on to stay alive.
By matching the proposed tariffs with U.S. import data for pharmaceutical products, we can estimate the impact: and it’s severe. In 2024, the U.S. imported $73.6 billion in pharmaceuticals from Ireland—its largest foreign supplier. The proposed 20 percent tariff on all EU nations would add almost $15 billion in new costs, most of which will be passed directly to patients through higher drug prices, should those tariffs go into effect.
China, while a smaller pharmaceutical supplier ($9.7 billion in 2024), is now subject to a 145 percent tariff—piling an estimated $14 billion in added costs onto American consumers. That’s more than the value of the imports themselves.
Looking across all countries that supply America’s pharmaceutical industry, the proposed tariffs would increase drug costs by an estimated $63.3 billion per year. If that number ends up being lower, it will be because people couldn’t afford their medications and went without the medicine they needed.
The direct effects are only the beginning of the problem. The proposed tariffs are likely to violate World Trade Organization (WTO) General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, particularly the 1994 Pharma Agreement, which explicitly exempts many pharmaceutical products from tariffs. If the U.S. breaks the rules, other countries can and will retaliate. So far, they’ve held off because Trump’s tariffs were delayed. But if both sides move forward, we could end up in a full-blown global trade war that leaves everyone, especially Americans, poorer and sicker.
If the tariffs would be so harmful to Americans’ health, at least it they will bring pharmaceutical manufacturing back to America, right? In short, no.
While some proponents argue that tariffs will help rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity, presumably including pharmaceuticals, the U.S. doesn’t have the labor force to support large-scale manufacturing expansion. Unemployment is already around 4 percent, a level economists consider full employment. If we want to grow the sector, we’d need either more American workers—or a dramatic increase in immigration, which President Trump has not prioritized.
Even if labor were available, building the necessary infrastructure would take years. Pharmaceutical production, like many other manufacturing industries, is highly complex. Companies are unlikely to invest billions in new facilities when trade policy shifts every week.
These tariffs won’t make American medicine great. They’ll make it unaffordable, especially for the most financially vulnerable. Rising prices are always unwelcome, but when the price of essential medicine spikes by tens of billions of dollars a year, Americans’ health is what’s at stake.
Justin Leventhal is a senior policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, follow us on X @ConsumerPal.