Trump Instructed Big Pharma to Draft 2017 Drug Pricing Plan, FOIA Request Reveals

October 30, 2024

Trump Instructed Big Pharma to Draft 2017 Drug Pricing Plan, FOIA Request Reveals

Washington, D.C. - In his term in office, former president Donald Trump asked pharmaceutical executives to craft a drug pricing plan, which Trump later mirrored in a 2017 executive order draft, according to an email uncovered by Public Citizen through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Read the full analysis here.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America's (PhRMA) email pitch to Trump's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) outlines a "five-point plan" which reflects drugmaker priorities to cut regulations, limit the influence of middlemen and raise prices abroad, without meaningfully reducing drugmaker prices in the United States. The executive order draft was criticized and never issued, but its vision was implemented later by the Trump administration, including an HHS "blueprint"and a Council of Economic Advisers report.

Before he was elected in 2016, Trump said Big Pharma was "getting away with murder," but Public Citizen Access to Medicines director Peter Maybarduksays Trump's 2017 drug pricing plans simply furthered Big Pharma interests.

"Trump promised to challenge Big Pharma, but instead, he championed its cause," said Maybarduk. "Trump's homework assignment for PhRMA suggests the former president made PhRMA's wish list the core of his drug pricing plans. Trump's draft executive order incorporated and appears largely to have been built around the five points PhRMA gave the White House. The 2017 Trump plan did not lower drug prices at all. That was a betrayal of public confidence and of Trump's own words."