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The U.S. Department of Commerce is asking the public for data, analysis and ideas about how the current import rules for pharmaceuticals affect the safety of the United States.
The department's Bureau of Industry and Security has published a request for comments about the effects of prescription drug and drug ingredient imports on national security in the Federal Register. Comments are due May 7. Commenters can file their comments online through the government's Regulations.gov system.
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The bureau says it's especially interested in hearing about the possibility that non-U.S. manufacturers could be hurting U.S. producers through the use of artificially suppressed prices, and "whether additional measures, including tariffs or quotas, are necessary to protect national security."
But the bureau also wants information about the current and projected demand for prescription drugs in the United States, the extent to which domestic production of prescription drugs can meet domestic demand, and "any other relevant factors."
The new announcement is related to the wave of tariffs, or import taxes, that President Donald Trump announced April 3.
Related: Tariff wars loom over employers' prescription drug plans
The original wave of tariffs excluded pharmaceuticals, but administration officials said they would be conducting a national security review of pharmaceutical imports.
Trump said April 8 during a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner that the administration would soon announce a major tariff on pharmaceuticals.
An analyst at the Brookings Institution has argued that predicting what any new tariffs would do to prescription drug prices is difficult. Prices would probably rise more for employer plans than for Medicare or Medicaid, but distributors could absorb some of the increase, and increases might be lower for drugs with plenty of competition, the analyst wrote.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
