Trump Implements Price Controls On Pharmaceuticals - A Similar Policy Kamala Harris Campaigned On, That Everyone Called "Communist"
Trump says he also wants drug manufacturing to return domestically.
Today, the White House today announced an executive order by President Donald Trump to implement what are effectively price controls on the pharmaceutical industry to forcibly lower drug prices, which are incredibly expensive in the United States.
According to the executive order:
The United States has less than five percent of the world’s population and yet funds around three quarters of global pharmaceutical profits. This egregious imbalance is orchestrated through a purposeful scheme in which drug manufacturers deeply discount their products to access foreign markets, and subsidize that decrease through enormously high prices in the United States.
The United States has for too long turned its back on Americans, who unwittingly sponsor both drug manufacturers and other countries. These entities today rely on price markups on American consumers, generous public subsidies for research and development primarily through the National Institutes of Health, and robust public financing of prescription drug consumption through Federal and State healthcare programs.
Drug manufacturers, rather than seeking to equalize evident price discrimination, agree to other countries’ demands for low prices, and simultaneously fight against the ability for public and private payers in the United States to negotiate the best prices for patients. The inflated prices in the United States fuel global innovation while foreign health systems get a free ride.
This abuse of Americans’ generosity, who deserve low-cost pharmaceuticals on the same terms as other developed nations, must end. Americans will no longer be forced to pay almost three times more for the exact same medicines, often made in the exact same factories. As the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals, Americans should get the best deal.
Americans should not be forced to subsidize low-cost prescription drugs and biologics in other developed countries, and face overcharges for the same products in the United States. Americans must therefore have access to the most-favored-nation price for these products.
My Administration will take immediate steps to end global freeloading and, should drug manufacturers fail to offer American consumers the most-favored-nation lowest price, my Administration will take additional aggressive action.
This action, according to a complimentary fact sheet, states:
The Order directs the U.S. Trade Representative and Secretary of Commerce to take action to ensure foreign countries are not engaged in practices that purposefully and unfairly undercut market prices and drive price hikes in the United States.
The Order instructs the Administration to communicate price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers to establish that America, the largest purchaser and funder of prescription drugs in the world, gets the best deal.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services will establish a mechanism through which American patients can buy their drugs directly from manufacturers who sell to Americans at a “Most-Favored-Nation” price, bypassing middlemen.
If drug manufacturers fail to offer most-favored-nation pricing, the Order directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to: (1) propose rules that impose most-favored-nation pricing; and (2) take other aggressive measures to significantly reduce the cost of prescription drugs to the American consumer and end anticompetitive practices.
This latest executive action by President Trump (presuming it does not get shot down by the courts like some of his other executive orders he’s signed this year) builds upon another executive order he signed last week, which aims to return more pharmaceutical manufacturing back domestically; which the administration claims “is clearing bureaucratic obstacles to critical domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing in order to usher in America’s new Golden Age by ensuring access to the medicines Americans need.”
During his press conference announcing the order with Human and Health Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump said the American people will “love this” and that he is going up against the “most powerful lobby in the world,” and called the order “one of the most important orders that has ever been signed.”
Trump also stated that "Medicaid costs are going down and Medicare costs are going down because of what we're doing today."
“Kamunism” And Price Controls
Interestingly enough, lost in the since-forgotten headlines and campaign speeches, Trump’s executive order is similar to something former Vice-President Kamala Harris campaigned on in relation to food and groceries.
According to the Harris-Walz economic playbook her administration would have gone after price-gouging by corporations and conglomerates who were artificially increasing the price of their food products. “The bill will set rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers during times of crisis to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries,” the proposed playbook said.
However, in a rare moment of parity, mainstream and liberal-leaning media agreed that Kamala’s plan was not a good one and inferred that it was “communism,” pointing out that such government intervention like this repeatedly has failed.
Fortune summarized the would-be administration’s doomed to fail polices, writing:
The list of examples goes on, but the theme is the same: Price controls fail to arrest inflation and ultimately impose costs that far exceed the burdens associated with the original inflation. Importantly, the adverse consequences of price-gouging laws do not only apply when targeting inflation. These controls never work regardless of the promise and often result in perverse if not outright cruel outcomes.
Historically, price controls fail to meet the hope of their advocates because such policies do not address the root causes of the problem and introduce a slew of harmful and unintended consequences. The Harris price-gouging plan follows this same script. It fails to understand the causes of inflation and does not account for the harmful consequences price caps inevitably impose.
Given that history, the best we can hope for is that the vice president’s proposal is merely pandering to voters, and she has no intention of following through. Otherwise, consumers will pay a very high price indeed.
Renowned economist Milton Friedman, winner of the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Policies, has repeatedly pointed out that price control measures are a coverup for inflation and “the effects of their own policies,” and that interventionism only makes the problems worse as it attempts to repress the source of the issues. Instead, Friedman contended that price controls would lead to more inflation, reduced quality, shortages, hoarding, and black markets.
After President Trump posted on Truth Social that he was going to be signing an executive order to wrangle in drug costs, contributing writer for the Trends Journal Gregory Mannarino echoed a similar sentiment to Friedman’s; pointing out that “instead of returning purchasing power to the dollar/currency, which would harm the Fed. and bring down prices overall,” Trump is using price controls instead.
He added:
“How it starts. This will be framed as “negotiating power” for Medicare or as importing cheaper foreign drug prices (often called international reference pricing).
“But MAKE NO MISTAKE… if the government is setting caps, anchoring domestic prices to foreign benchmarks, or mandating rebate structures, then yes, its state intervention, and that’s price fixing.
“Why they’re doing it now? Political theater, make it look like they are fighting Big Pharma.
“Bigger picture? Cover for inflation. If prices appear to drop somewhere, they can deflect from the broader system-wide breakdown.
“Here’s the trap… When a government starts controlling prices in just one sector, it creates pressure for intervention elsewhere. It distorts supply and demand, discourages innovation, and may lead to shortages. (Think I am making this up? Just look it up for yourselves).”
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Remember when Trump slammed Kamala’s policies as “Soviet style” and “full Communist,” and most people across the aisle agreed that her proposals were lunacy?
But times have changed: ‘it's him fighting big-business and lobbyists and corporate greed’… the same thing Kamala argued. Oh, but when she says it it’s laughed at and viewed as worrisome, but when Trump does it it is ‘liberating?’ When the markets are tanking, it’s Biden’s market; but when the markets soar, it’s Trump’s market.
Listen: I am NOT here to defend the drug oligarchs, absolutely not whatsoever; I have for years told people they need to get off of these drugs; they are harming your health, are not curing your problems, and keeping you dumbed down and bankrupting you all at the same time. Having said that, Trump’s policy - IF it is allowed to take hold and is not shot down by Congress or district courts - will only create more shortages and inflation and likely an even greater drug epidemic far worse than what we have now.
This is why this country is DOOMED. You can literally flip the script on the masses and they will fall for it. Dems and libs will screech against this because they blindly hate Trump and the “red hats” and conservatives will cheer this as Trump fighting for the little guy. Or take Musk: this annoying clown who was heralded by leftists for years and heckled by conservatives; and now the script has flipped, with liberals vandalizing Teslas and mobbing Tesla dealerships, declaring Musk to be a Nazi, while MAGA lauds him for helping the little guy and fighting corruption, as they rush to buy Tesla stock and defend his EVs. You can’t make it up, but here we are in 2025.
Jeremiah 7:19 Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?
James 3:16 For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
How does this coincide with the deals and connections Trump and Bobby have made with big-pharma and twerps like Bill Gates?
Indeed, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s words that whoever won the election would make no difference continue to ring truer and truer each day this administration is here.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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22) But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore.
Isaiah 42:22
Americans couldn’t care less about being restored, going back to the old paths and God’s word - the King James Bible. They would rather live in delulu land in their religious self-righteous organized religious traditions, make their business deals, live all pompous in their suburban doo doo holes living their American DELUSION not dream, obsess over overpaid men hit a ball with a bat (because it’s Baseball Season) and then when that’s done obsess and idolize a bunch of meatheads throw a football, listen to their physicians of no value and forgers of lies, play video games and watch TV until their brains fall out of their heads, goof around on their TikToks, get wasted and high as a kite, indulge in sin and then sing God Bless America!
America is truly DOOMED.
" . . . Everyone Called "Communist" "<---obviously, that depends on 'who' says it! Listen, the medical industrial complex will NEVER take a cut. What they'll do is transfer the cost to your premium, or co-pay, also known as out-of-pocket expense. It will go through another 'arm' of their network. Kinda like when you transfer your own money from one pant pocket to the other, it's still your money.
Those that take prescriptions will save nor by-pass a thing. The medical industrial complex will still get their pound of flesh (so to speak).