Drugs and microchips were spared from the wave of duties that from the United States is investing the world, but immediately after what has renamed “Liberation Day” Donald Trump ensured that both sectors will not be exempt and will come soon New rates.
For this reason, the European medicinal industry, in 2024 the main item among the imports of the USA from the EU, cannot sleep peacefully, and Ursula von der Leyen is trying to run for cover so as not to be caught unprepared.
Domestic duties
Among the 37 pages of Exempt products From the US duties, there are over 200 categories of active and medicinal principles, from drugs for cough and influence to those for cardiovascular diseases, to vaccines.
Two days after the announcement of the new customs policy of the United States, Trump has however declared that also the rates on the pharmaceutical sector “they will begin to arriveI believe, at a level that we have never seen before “, underlining that the medicines” are a separate category “on which a” review phase “is underway, under the magnifying glass of its administration.
Statements that in Brussels triggered an even greater awareness of the need to play in advance, to avoid the impact of the commercial war on an EU sector that was worth last year 127 billion dollars of imports in the United States.
Among the countries that could undergo the heaviest repercussions there is Italy, which has made pharmaceutical products one of the main excellence exported to the USA, for a value of 9.8 billion euros of goods sent from the other side of the ocean in 2024, against a 1.4 billion import.
Von der Leyen’s meeting with Big Pharma
To try to safeguard the sector, the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen brought together the main representatives of the European pharmaceutical industry precisely to discuss the effect of possible duties on a sector considered strategic for the European Union.
The Big Pharma expressed concerns in particular on the domino effect of any US rates, which would compromise not only EU companies, but would also have consequences for global supply chains and the Availability of medicines For European and US patients.
The participants in the meeting with the Commission asked for a intervention In support of innovation in the single market and to simplify the procedures, in particular for clinical experiments and the digitization of the European health system, as well as measures for the protection of intellectual property.
Above the representatives of the sector, especially the EU Biotech Act and the bioeconomic strategies and life sciences, on which they urged Brussels to strengthen the EU position as a global leader in biotechnology and bio -foundation.
