President Donald Trump announced Friday a deal to lower U.S. prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
Trump made an Oval Office announcement late Friday afternoon on the advancement of his “most favored nation” effort to lower U.S. pharmaceutical prices in line with those of other developed nations, particularly for low-income patients without insurance or on Medicaid.
“Today, AstraZeneca is committing to offering all of their prescription medications to medicaid at most favored nations prices,” Trump said at the briefing with health officials and Pascal Soriot, the CEO of the United Kingdom-based AstraZeneca. “In other words, the lowest price anywhere in the world, that’s what we get.”
Trump also said the company would offer discounted drugs through the TrumpRx.gov site.
Trump was joined by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Mehmet Oz, and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA).
“This can have a huge impact on everything from Social Security to Medicare to Medicaid, anything where they’re buying any prescription drugs,” Trump said. “It’s going to have an incredible impact. It’s going to lower itself greatly.”
AstraZeneca said it would also be investing $50 billion in manufacturing, research, and development in the United States, including a new facility in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“This agreement ensures we’ll make an even bigger difference for american patients,” Soriot said at the event. He added that the company had received a reprieve from tariffs that
Trump sent a letter to 17 major pharmaceutical companies this summer, setting an end-of-September deadline for the industry to start implementing his “most favored nation” policies to lower prices for patients in the U.S.
According to a White House fact sheet published in July, when Trump made his first announcement about his plan, the U.S. at the time made up 75% of global pharmaceutical profits despite having less than 5% of the world population.
Officials told reporters last week that the goal of Trump’s plan is to bring U.S. net pharmaceutical prices into parity with those of other G7 countries, as well as Switzerland and Denmark, all of which have some form of socialized medicine system.
Last week, Pfizer became the first pharmaceutical company to announce a “most favored nation” deal with the administration, committing to providing every state Medicaid program with reduced pricing for all of its products. The administration has said this will result in significant savings for the social safety net program for lower-income Americans.
The agreement with Pfizer also requires the company to introduce all new drugs at the same market prices in the U.S. as it would for other developed countries. Additionally, any increased revenues Pfizer makes from raising foreign prices will be repatriated to decrease U.S. prices.
The White House has not yet released specifics of the net price for all the products Pfizer is discounting for Medicaid patients, but senior administration officials provided examples of products that would receive price reductions of between 40% and 80%.
Both AstraZeneca and Pfizer worked with officials in the first Trump administration in 2020 on “Operation Warp Speed” to produce vaccines for COVID-19 during the early stages of the pandemic, producing a vaccine within the first seven months of the pandemic.
Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday that the global price for pharmaceuticals will inevitably increase slightly, but U.S. prices will decrease dramatically.
“The world price, because the world is bigger than the United States, a lot more people, but the world price will go up a little bit, and our price will come down a lot. So if a pill sells for $10 in London and $100 here, the pill will go to $20 in London and $20 for us. It’s pretty simple,” Trump said Thursday.
Trump also said “every country, essentially,” has been willing to accept this impending increase to their pharmaceutical products under the threat of further tariffs from the U.S.
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“They know that if they don’t do it, we’re going to put a tariff on for double the price, and they’re going to do it,” Trump said.
AstraZeneca did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
, 2025-10-10 22:27:00, 
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