Plus: More tariff mania; Dotdash Meredith rebrands, admits DDM was ‘not great.’
It was a busy Thursday for Donald Trump. In addition to imposing sweeping tariffs (more on that later), the president also sent a letter to 17 pharmaceutical giants demanding that they grant the U.S. “most favored nation” pricing on drugs, essentially ensuring prices in the country are set equal to that of the lowest cost in a similarly wealthy nation. His deadline for this major pricing shift is Sept. 29.
“If you refuse to step up, we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices,” the letter read, though it’s unclear what those tools are or what legal justification the president would use to force companies to change their pricing.
This latest move is an escalation of a letter sent in May, where Trump asked for reductions to drug prices. In the new letter, Trump said the proposals submitted since then were “shifting blame and requesting policy changes that would result in billions of dollars in handouts to industry.”
Responses to the letter are mixed so far.
“Importing foreign price controls would undermine American leadership, hurting patients and workers,” said lobbying group PhRMA spokesperson Alex Schriver in a statement to the New York Times. But at least one pharmaceutical executive is publicly agreeing with Trump – albeit less about lowering costs for Americans than raising them for Europeans.
“I personally believe that the president is right to say that price equalization should happen,” Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s chief executive, said in a call with reporters this week, the Times reported. “The cost of R&D in our industry should be shared more fairly across rich countries.” Soirot said that his company had put forward proposals to lower American prices.
Novo Nordisk offered a more general statement, CNBC reported, saying it was “focused on improving patient access and affordability” and that it would “continue to work to find solutions that help people access the medication they need.”
Why it matters: Negotiating with the Trump administration, both privately and publicly, is a tricky affair. Some amount of flattery goes a long way with the president, a tactic Soriot is taking. Novo Nordisk stuck to vague generalities in a statement that could apply in many situations and sounds calm and in control.
But the PhRMA statement shows a strategy we’ve seen become increasingly popular amid broadsides from the Trump administration: allowing the most pointed statements to come from a trade group. This allows industries to act in concert so no individual company pokes its head above the fray. Like a Roman phalanx, moving together protects the entire group. This same approach has been broadly used by companies during the tariff wars – though the next Scoop item indicates this perhaps wasn’t wholly successful.
We’ll see which approach proves most effective as this story continues to unfold.
Editor’s Top Reads:
- Donald Trump has announced big new tariffs against countries around the world. While some nations struck deals, others face eye-popping tariff rates, such as 39% on Swiss chocolates and watches and 35% on Canadian goods not covered by existing trade agreements. Even before these tariffs were announced, major retailers warned that prices would begin to rise for consumers. For the first half of the year, retailers had largely done as Trump ordered and “ate the tariffs” – that is, insulated consumers from price hikes. That will soon end, NBC News reported. Companies that sell things Americans buy every day, such as Hershey, P&G and Mondelēz have all warned that their prices will begin to rise. Will they now become targets of the Trump administration when Americans begin to feel the pinch? Will they begin to message more aggressively against the tariffs if consumers pull back? We’re in uncharted territory here. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the Trump administration, it’s that a deal can always be struck and the situation can always change.
- Media giant Dotdash Meredith is changing its name to reflect that of its best-known publication: People Inc. While the company owns 40 separate brands, People is its most successful. But beyond that, CEO Neil Vogel told Digiday that the name reflects the ethos of the rest of the websites and magazines under its umbrella. “… ‘people’ is a really good representation of our narrative and what we do in this world, where so much is synthesized, fake and artificial,” Vogel said. Anything is an improvement over “Dotdash Meredith,” which Vogel admitted was “clunky and not great,” but a rebrand is always tricky. In this case, the name of one publication has to represent 40, which could cause confusion. From a media relations perspective, it’s worth noting that Vogel said that 19 of People Inc’s publications – including Allrecipes, Health, InStyle, Martha Stewart and Verywell Mind – are being viewed as the “core” of the new company, while the other 21 are “not going to be part of the economic growth engine.” That doesn’t mean they’ll disappear overnight, but the future doesn’t look rosy for half the brands at the renamed company.
- Etsy is pulling back from its TV ad spending and reallocating those dollars into search ads, social ads and influencer marketing. The Wall Street Journal reports that by the end of 2025, TV ad spending for the online retailer will drop from about a third to about a tenth of its total spend. This shows a clear shift away from a TV audience – read, older – to a more digitally savvy, younger audience. The other major change? A huge push toward push notifications and personalization in email campaigns.Chief Executive Josh Silverman said that the number of personalized messages to existing customers is expected to be nearly 100% by the end of the year – up from 40% now. The overall push indicates the direction of messaging in general: from general and mass-market to hyper-specific not to just to a general niche, but to each individual person.
Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.
The post The Scoop: Trump demands changes to drug pricing. Some pharma execs agree. appeared first on PR Daily.
