Trump announces a 100 percent customs for pharmaceutical imports

US President Donald Trump has announced tariffs of 100 percent on pharmaceutical imports to the United States from October 1. If pharmaceutical manufacturers build a production facility in the USA, you could handle customs, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Companies that either have already started to start or started building were excluded from the planned tariffs, it continued.

The German pharmaceutical industry in particular had feared tariffs: the United States is its most important export market, almost a quarter of German pharmaceutical exports are going. But the tariffs are also painful for India: the South Asian country mainly imports drugs into the USA.

A deal has actually been between the USA and the EU-a basic customs set of 15 percent has been set for EU imports to the United States. For European manufacturers of medicines, semiconductors and building woods, it has nevertheless not been clear whether the customs upper limit of 15 percent also applies to them.

Car manufacturers also had ambiguity until the end, and it only became clear on Thursday that the tariffs will be reduced from 27.5 percent to 15 percent for cars in the USA in retrospect from the EU.

The United States is the most important export country for the German pharmaceutical industry with around 130,000 employees. According to the Federal Statistical Office, 2024 were worth 27 billion euros and thus almost a quarter of German pharmaceutical exports. The German pharmaceutical industry is therefore much more dependent on the US market than mechanical engineering and the chemical industry. Vaccines were particularly in demand.