As the second Trump administration settles in, the U.S.' top pharmaceutical trade group is drafting its ambitions for the next four years ahead of a planned meeting with the president on Thursday.
The sit-down between President Donald Trump and leaders from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) will provide the trade group’s head, Stephen Ubl, and CEOs from several of the world’s top drugmakers with a potential avenue to sway the commander in chief’s views on policies affecting the industry, Bloomberg reported, citing people close to the matter.
In particular, the industry wants to garner support for adjustments to certain drug pricing provisions baked into 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the news service said.
The meeting with the president coincides with a changing of the guard at PhRMA's board this week as well as a release of the new policy agenda the organization has crafted for 2025.
Wednesday, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Ph.D., officially kicked off his tenure as PhRMA’s new chair, flanked by Merck & Co. chief Robert Davis in the position of treasurer. Sanofi helmsman Paul Hudson—who served as treasurer under PhRMA’s previous chair Daniel O’Day—has been tapped as heir apparent to oversee the lobbying group’s board after Bourla.
“We can overcome the most difficult of challenges when our industry and government leaders work together for a common good,” Bourla said in a press release about his new role. “That’s why I look forward to working with policymakers across the country to address the burden of chronic disease and other devastating conditions, improve patients’ lives, and ensure life-changing medicines are available and affordable for people who need them.”
As for what that government-industry collaboration might look like, PhRMA this week released its 2025 policy agenda (PDF), which broadly seeks to promote pro-innovation regulatory and trade positions, challenge features of the IRA price negotiations, curb hospital drug markups and clamp down on pharma middlemen.
Regarding innovation, PhRMA says it will encourage the government to protect intellectual property at home and abroad, modernize the FDA through tools like artificial intelligence and defend American workers and inventions through strong trade agreements.
As PhRMA’s strategy pertains to drug price negotiations, the organization wants, first and foremost, for the new administration to fix the IRA’s “pill penalty,” which provides small-molecule drugs a shorter window of time than biologics to operate independently of potential government price setting.
PhRMA also wants to reverse what it perceives as “bureaucratic overreach” in the bill as well as prevent further expansion of government price negotiations.
While only time will tell whether the biopharma industry and Trump 2.0 play nice over the next four years, recent moves by the administration—including efforts to cut Nationals Institutes of Health research grants and mass layoffs at health agencies like the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—have created significant uncertainty for the industry.
Elsewhere, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was confirmed as HHS secretary last week, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again commission will investigate whether childhood vaccination schedules and antidepressants, plus other factors like ultra-processed foods, are tied to a “drastic rise in chronic disease” in the country.
RFK Jr., who has prominently disseminated anti-vaccine views in the past, had reportedly made a pledge to Sen. Bill Cassidy, M.D., that he would not meddle in vaccine policy in order to win the Republican politician’s support for his confirmation.
Nevertheless, PhRMA’s new chair is confident that the Trump administration will be more beneficial for the pharma industry than not.
Speaking at a PhRMA summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Bourla argued that a second Trump presidency offers more opportunities than risks for drugmakers, according to Bloomberg.
“Do I think that we can convince them to do something bold in vaccines with Kennedy in HHS? Probably not,” Bourla said at the event, as quoted by the news service. “But do I think that we can convince them to do something very bold for cancer or cardiovascular diseases with Kennedy in the HHS? Absolutely yes.”