During Donald Trump’s early campaign days, he brought up issues involving the costly prices of drugs. On Jan. 31, Trump announced a message to pharmaceutical companies, promising them that regulations will be lowered and taxes will be cut by the Trump administration if they brought their production back to the U.S.. Trump criticized companies who merged with foreign companies in order to relocate their headquarters in areas with more favorable tax rates. Because of the merging, these companies started to produce drugs abroad. In a meeting between Trump and executives of pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Trump said that they’ve done a “terrific job over the years” but that prices of drugs must decrease. Surrounded by Vice President Mike Pence and eight other executives of the pharmaceutical companies, Trump announced that “For Medicare, for Medicaid, we have to get prices way down”.

At the meeting, President Trump stressed the fact that he wanted to accelerate both cures and drug approvals of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The President has also stated that he feels “disturbed” every time a terminally ill patient is spotted that is in need of a drug that has yet to be approved by the FDA. Trump also added that a trade system of the drugs will be issued in which foreign countries will “pay their fair share for U.S. manufactured drugs so our drug companies [will] have greater financial resources to accelerate development of new cures”.

In his press meeting, he proposed to “increase competition through bidding wars” to lower prices of drugs. However, he did not elaborate on how this tactic would prove successful. Trump also stated that “Pharma has a lot of lobbies, a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power. And there’s very little bidding on drugs”. President Trump isn’t the only one who believes in the lowered prices of drugs. Robert Bradway, chairman and CEO of Amgen, also shares a similar desire of Trump’s which is the eradication of diseases. However, the elimination of diseases requires the use of genetically-engineered drugs.

Negotiations about lowering the drug prices for seniors using Medicare between drug companies and the government are forbidden by federal law. In the past, Trump mentioned how he would eventually end this policy. This policy is best known as “price-fixing”.

Since the press conference, there has been no further information about President Trump’s plans to lessen the prices of drugs manufactured by big pharmaceutical companies.