President Donald Trump, accompanied by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, speaks during a swearing-in ceremony for Dr. Mehmet Oz as the Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator in the Oval Office at the White House on April 18, 2025. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
"I think, by the way, pharmaceutical – I have great respect for these companies and for the people that run them. I 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. Nobody really understood why, but I figured it out. For years, pharmaceutical and drug companies have said that research and development costs were what they are, and for no reason whatsoever, they had to be borne by America alone," Trump said. "Not anymore, they don't."
The White House said that the executive order "directs the U.S. Trade Representative and Secretary of Commerce to take action to ensure foreign countries are not engaged in practices that purposefully and unfairly undercut market prices and drive price hikes in the United States.
"The Order instructs the Administration to communicate price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers to establish that America, the largest purchaser and funder of prescription drugs in the world, gets the best deal," the White House said.
"The Secretary of Health and Human Services will establish a mechanism through which American patients can buy their drugs directly from manufacturers who sell to Americans at a ‘Most-Favored-Nation’ price, bypassing middlemen," the White House added. "If drug manufacturers fail to offer most-favored-nation pricing, the Order directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to: (1) propose rules that impose most-favored-nation pricing; and (2) take other aggressive measures to significantly reduce the cost of prescription drugs to the American consumer and end anticompetitive practices."
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said alongside Trump, "I never thought that this would happen in my lifetime."
"I have a couple of kids who are Democrats, are big Bernie Sanders fans. And when I told them that this was going to happen, they had tears in their eyes. Because they thought, this is never going to happen," he said. "And we finally have a president who is willing to stand up for the American people."
President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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"To lower costs for Americans, we need to address the real reasons U.S. patients are paying more for their medicines. We are the only country in the world that lets PBMs, insurers and hospitals take 50% of every dollar spent on medicines," Ubl also said. "In fact, hospital markups in 340B and the rebates and fees paid to middlemen in the U.S. often exceed the total cost of medicines oversees. Giving more of this money to patients will lower their medicine costs and reduce the gap with European prices."
Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
Greg Norman is a reporter at Fox News Digital.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/president-trump-takes-big-pharma-signing-executive-order-lower-drug-prices