Precios: Trump se reune con "top pharma execs".

President Trump promised some of the nation’s top drug company executives in a meeting at the White House on Tuesday that he would slash regulations at the Food and Drug Administration and make it easier for them to manufacture products in the United States. 

He also described as “fantastic” the person he planned to nominate for commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, someone he said would streamline the agency and get drug approval decisions faster. 

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 “You can’t get approval for the plant, and you can’t get approval for the drug; other than that, you’re doing fantastic,” Mr. Trump said at the meeting, to laughter from top executives of companies like Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly and Novartis. 

But even as he struck a cordial tone with them, he said that lowering drug costs would remain a focus and that he would discuss the issue further during the nonpublic portion of the meeting, away from the news media. “The U.S. drug companies have produced extraordinary results for our country, but the pricing has been astronomical,” Mr. Trump said. “We have to get prices down for a lot of reasons.” 

Battered by public outrage over the rising costs of drugs in recent years, the drug industry has regarded Mr. Trump warily in recent weeks. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology stocks rallied after his election as investors bet that Mr. Trump would reduce corporate taxes and adopt more industry-friendly policies than his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who had made reducing drug prices a campaign issue. 

But that optimism gave way to unease after Mr. Trump pledged to tackle the drug pricing issue himself, including raising the possibility of allowing Medicare to negotiate the prices of drugs directly, something the industry has long opposed. 

Just a few weeks ago, Mr. Trump singled out the pharmaceutical industry for its high prices, accusing it of “getting away with murder.” (...)


At the meeting, many of the drug industry leaders were eager to emphasize their long histories in the United States as well as their American manufacturing plants, even though the pharmaceutical industry — like many others — has increasingly moved its production overseas. More than half of the finished drug products that are sold in the United States are made here, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, but the majority of the raw ingredients used to make those products are manufactured in countries like China and India. 

Even Joseph Jimenez, the chief executive of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, emphasized the company’s American ties, pointing out the billions of dollars it spends on research and development and saying, “Our global headquarters is near Boston.” Eric Althoff, a spokesman for Novartis, which is based in Basel, Switzerland, said Mr. Jimenez was referring to the company’s research and development headquarters. 

Mr. Jimenez and others supported Mr. Trump’s pledge to cut taxes and regulations. “One of the things that can help us is a lower tax rate,” Mr. Jimenez said. 

“Yep, we’ll get it,” Mr. Trump replied.
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