The following content is sponsored by Americans for Limited Government.
Joe Biden promised he would cure cancer and lower drug prices. He failed at both. His signature bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, increased drug prices and made it harder to cure cancer with regulations like the disastrous pill penalty — which President Trump recently said in an Executive Order that he’s going to work with Congress to fix.
But Biden didn’t stop there. Working in concert with extreme liberals like Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi, he endorsed importing Europe’s disastrous drug price controls through international reference or Most Favored Nation (MFN) drug pricing, which are nothing more than government-mandated price controls that would kill new cures for diseases like cancer.
Patients who need breakthrough cures can’t afford their crazy ideas. Just ask European patients, who must wait an average of 512 days to get new drugs for cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other life-threatening diseases. That’s a year and a half during which they can’t get the prescription drugs they need because of price controls.
And those American life-saving drugs that Europeans must wait for would likely never arrive if we import their price controls through MFN or reference pricing — either of which would kill innovation in America.
It’s happened before. Europe used to be a leader in developing new drugs. Few Americans realize that until the 1980s, Europe was the global center of pharmaceutical research and development. That changed dramatically when Europe embraced socialist price controls on drugs.
The consequences were swift and devastating. European drug companies relocated their operations to the United States, which offered a more innovation-friendly environment.
The results speak for themselves. Since 2014, approximately 600 new medicines have been approved in the U.S., many representing first-in-class breakthroughs. America invents more innovative drugs than any other nation, giving Americans the earliest access to cutting-edge treatments while creating a thriving industry that supports over 5 million American jobs across more than 1,500 research and manufacturing facilities nationwide.
Biden, Bernie, and Pelosi’s European price controls would make this all go away. Even worse, their prescription would allow China to replace the United States as the leader in pharmaceutical innovation. Take 5 million jobs, send them to China and call me in the morning.
While MFN and reference pricing proponents create uncertainty, the Chinese Communist Party is on the move. Clinical trials from Chinese companies now represent 30 percent of global drug trial starts, rapidly approaching America’s 35 percent. China’s R&D investment is expanding at nearly triple America’s rate, increasing by 2,600 percent from 2000 to 2021.
CCP-backed Chinese startups are gradually displacing American biotech firms in the innovation pipeline. In 2024 alone, 31 percent of innovative drugs in-licensed by multinational corporations came from China, comprising 48 deals worth $8.4 billion in upfront payments—a record high.
This dramatic shift isn’t accidental; the CCP backs it. China understands the national security imperative of having a thriving pharmaceutical industry. They’re targeting our pharmaceutical companies for extinction. If they control the pipeline for new drugs and treatments, they can recreate the dangerous dependency on Chinese-made medical equipment that occurred during COVID and hold us hostage. We won’t even know if the drugs they make are safe.
President Trump understands this, which is why he’s working to keep America the world leader in drug development for national security and for patients. The Trump administration can and should renegotiate international trade agreements to require European governments to pay fair market prices. America invents the overwhelming majority of new medicines in the world, but we run a $117 billion global trade deficit in pharmaceutical products, largely due to European price controls on American drugs. President Trump can eliminate that deficit by forcing Europe to stop freeloading on American innovation.
President Trump has the historic opportunity to lower drug costs and cure diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and more. He‘s Making America Healthy Again, by increasing prevention and screening; knocking out the insurance and hospital middlemen that drive up American drug costs; and unleashing the industry to develop new cures.
Adopting Biden’s failed strategy of importing Europe’s socialist price controls on drugs is a proven failure — and would allow China to replace the U.S. as the world leader in innovative medicines. Thankfully, President Trump knows better.
