The rates for tariffs on pharmaceuticals could reach 200%, said US President Donald Trump, while announcing plans to impose tariffs on both medicines and semiconductors.
"If they have to bring the pharmaceuticals into the country ... they're going to be tariffed at a very, very high rate, like 200%. We'll give them a certain period of time to get their act together," he said.
Trump also said that he would give drugmakers about one year "to get their act together." "We're going to give people about a year, a year and a half to come in and, after that, they're going to be tariffed," Trump told reporters, speaking at a meeting of his Cabinet at the White House.
"We're going to be announcing pharmaceuticals, chips, and various couple of other things - you know, big ones," Trump told reporters, while announcing a new tariff rate for copper.
He did not offer specifics on when the other announcements would come.
The step-by-step plan to implement tariffs on pharmaceuticals
Details on pharmaceutical tariffs "will come at the end of the month," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC after the Cabinet meeting.
"With pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, those studies are being completed at the end of the month, and so the president will then set his policies then, and I’m going to let him wait to decide how he’s going to do it," Lutnick said.
The Trump administration launched an investigation into the pharmaceutical industry in April as part of a bid to impose tariffs, arguing that the extensive reliance on foreign production of medicine poses a national security threat.
The Commerce Department, which is conducting the investigation, has yet to issue the report.