White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt displays a letter addressed to US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly from President Donald Trump during a press briefing in the White House in Washington, DC, on July 31, 2025. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
OAN Staff Katherine Mosack 3:15 PM – Thursday, July 31, 2025
President Donald Trump sent letters to the CEOs of 17 major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and more — with the letters calling for the companies to commit to lowering U.S. prescription drug prices within 60 days, setting a deadline of September 29th.
On Thursday, the president sent letters aiming to bring U.S. drug prices in line with the lowest prices found in other developed countries—referred to by the White House as “most-favored-nation” (MFN) pricing.
The list of companies that received the message includes: AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Genentech, Gilead, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Regeneron, and Sanofi.
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The White House also released a statement with the steps outlined in the letters:
Calling on manufacturers to provide MFN prices to every single Medicaid patient.
Requiring manufacturers to stipulate that they will not offer other developed nations better prices for new drugs than prices offered in the United States.
Providing manufacturers with an avenue to cut out middlemen and sell medicines directly to patients, provided they do so at a price no higher than the best price available in developed nations.
Using trade policy to support manufacturers in raising prices internationally provided that increased revenues abroad are reinvested directly into lowering prices for American patients and taxpayers.
The letters explain that the federal government under the Trump administration “will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices” if the manufacturers refuse to comply with the outlined steps.
The White House’s statement also revealed staggering facts about prescription drug pricing in the U.S. –providing an eye-opening perspective as to why the current administration is taking such decisive action.
“The United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet roughly 75% of global pharmaceutical profits come from American taxpayers,” the statement read.
Prescription drug prices in the United States are dramatically higher than in other wealthy nations, even after accounting for manufacturer discounts. Americans pay 2 to 4 times more, sometimes over 300% more, for the same brand-name drugs compared to citizens in other countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Regarding the statistic, Trump wrote in one of the letters: “This unacceptable burden on hardworking American families ends with my administration.”
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also read aloud one of the letters sent to the CEO of Eli Lilly at a White House Press Briefing on Thursday. The letter acknowledged that there had been proposals made by pharmaceutical companies in the past, but that most had “promised more of the same” — while asking for “billions of dollars in handouts” via their requested policy changes.
“Moving forward, the only thing I will accept from drug manufacturers is a commitment that provides American, families immediate relief from the vastly inflated drug prices and an end to the free ride of American Innovation by European and other developed nations,” Leavitt read to the room of reporters.
.@PressSec reads one of the letters sent by @POTUS today to the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies:
“Moving forward, the only thing I will accept from drug manufacturers is a commitment that provides American families immediate relief from the vastly inflated drug prices…” pic.twitter.com/GBt4ZDBtC9
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 31, 2025
In addition, in the letters, Trump referenced an Executive Order he signed on May 12th, titled Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients, which asserts that “Americans should not be forced to subsidize low-cost prescription drugs and biologics in other developed countries, and face overcharges for the same products in the United States. Americans must therefore have access to the most-favored-nation price for these products.”
The order prompted several conversations with pharmaceutical manufacturers to bring about MFN pricing to the American people.
Leavitt concluded by saying that the remainder of the letters sent by the president would be made available to reporters following the press briefing.
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