President Donald Trump of the United States is facing pressure from US hospitals and generic drugmakers to exempt medical goods from his new tariffs on Chinese imports.
This is as the hospitals join big pharma lobbyists who have said such trade barriers will cause shortages of medicines and higher prices in the United States.
Recall that the president on Tuesday imposed the 10% tariffs on all Chinese goods imported to the United States.
Media Talk Africa reports that China responded with its own targeted tariffs.
Trump suspended a threat of 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, agreeing to a 30-day pause after speaking with the leaders of those countries.
The president has set the European Union as his next target.
The American Hospital Association wrote in a letter to Trump on Tuesday that the tariffs will affect cancer and heart medicines as well as antibiotics like amoxicillin from China.
According to the US Trade Representative’s office, since 1994, the United States and its major trading partners have agreed to reciprocal tariff elimination for pharmaceutical products and chemicals used in drug production.
In the weeks leading up to the sanctions announcement, four lobbyists and one pharmaceutical executive said they had pressed the Trump administration for assurances that their products would be excluded from any tariffs.
The White House is yet to comment on the development.
According to the hospital lobbying group, which represents almost 5,000 US hospitals and healthcare systems, nearly 30% of raw ingredients used to make critical drugs come from China.
The group added that a third of disposable face masks and nearly all plastic gloves used in healthcare also come from China.
“Despite ongoing efforts to build the domestic supply chain, the U.S. healthcare system relies significantly on international sources,” it wrote in the letter to Trump.
The Association for Accessible Medicines, a generic medicines lobby group, said it was also asking the administration to provide an exemption, citing the tight profit margins makers of low-cost medicines face and the history of drug shortages.
