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The European Union’s trade deal with the United States could cost the pharmaceutical industry between $13 billion and $19 billion as branded medicines become subject to a tariff of 15%, analysts said on Monday. The added costs could raise prices for consumers unless pharmaceutical companies take action to mitigate the impact of the tariffs, one of the analysts said. Pharmaceuticals had historically been exempt from duties. Medicines are the largest European exports to the United States by value, and the EU accounts for about 60% of all pharmaceutical imports to the U.S. On Sunday, European officials said that a bilateral trade deal for an across-the-board 15% tariff included pharmaceuticals, except for some generic drugs, which would be subject to no tariffs. The U.S. has been conducting a national security investigation into the pharmaceutical sector, and the industry has been bracing for separate sectoral tariffs. President Donald Trump said earlier this month, before negotiating the bilateral deal, that pharmaceutical tariffs could be as high as 200%. Some Wall Street analysts said that they do not expect additional tariffs on the EU as a result of the investigation, but others cautioned that the deal was not yet signed and that several questions remained unanswered. UBS analyst Matthew Weston said that he expects details of the trade deal to include protective measures for EU pharma exports from the U.S. investigation, especially since such measures are being discussed in negotiations with the United Kingdom and Switzerland. ING analyst Diederik Stadig also said that while tariffs on top of the 15% were not expected, even after the conclusion of the national security investigations, nothing is completely clear “until a trade deal is inked.” Stadig estimates that these levies could add $13 billion to industry expenses without any mitigation strategies, and some of that could be ultimately borne by the consumer. Bernstein analyst Courtney Breen puts the additional expenses at $19 billion for the industry, but she notes that companies might be able to absorb some of the costs with the measures they have been implementingsuch as stockpiling of drug products and new deals with contract researchers. Earlier this month, Sanofi said it will sell a manufacturing facility in New Jersey to Thermo Fisher, where the French drugmaker’s therapies will continue to be manufactured. Roche’s CEO Thomas Schinecker said last week that the company was increasing its U.S. inventories to avoid any immediate disruption from tariffs. UBS’s Weston said that it was not immediately clear which generic drugs were exempted from duties under the deal, but any impact for generic drugmaker Sandoz for this year should mostly be manageable. Shares in pharmaceutical companies Sanofi, Roche, and Sandoz Group all closed up between 0.5% and 1% on Monday. By Bhanvi Satija, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump is asking a federal court in Florida to force Rupert Murdoch to give a deposition for the president’s lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal within 15 days, citing the media mogul’s age and physical condition. Trump sued The Journal, owned by Murdoch, in U.S. District Court in southern Florida on July 18 for its story reporting on the Republican president’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and alleged child sex trafficker who died in a New York jail in 2019 before trial. The president’s motion to the court on Monday noted Murdoch is 94 years old, is believed to have suffered several health scares in recent years, and is presumed to live in New York. Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial, Trump’s request to the court said. A spokesman for Murdoch’s News Corp. did not immediately return a request for comment. Trump’s motion said that, in a telephone conversation, Murdoch’s lawyer indicated he would oppose the effort.
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E-Commerce
Firefly Aerospace, the first commercial company to successfully land on the moon, just announced the target per-share pricing for its proposed initial public offering (IPO). In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today, the Texas-based company shared that it applied to list its common stock on the Nasdaq exchange, with an offer of 16.2 million shares, each priced between $35 and $39 per sharea launch that could raise as much as $631.8 million for Firefly. The company plans to trade its stock under the ticker symbol FLY. According to Firefly, net proceeds from the IPO would be used to repay outstanding borrowings under its credit agreement, pay any accrued and unpaid dividends on certain series of its preferred stock, and for general corporate purposes. If the IPO is approved by the Nasdaq, it will be the latest in a series of tech-focused listings that have drawn renewed investor interest this year, a group that includes fintech company Chime, stablecoin issuer Circle, and digital health platform Hinge Health. Firefly has not announced an expected date for the listing, but said in a press release on Monday that it has launched its “road show.” Fast Company has reached out for more information on the timing. What is Firefly Aerospace? Firefly Aerospace is a private company focusing on building small- to medium-lift launch vehicles, lunar landers, and orbital vehicles from its headquarters in Cedar Park, Texas. Its proposed IPO comes just months after the company landed on the moon for the first time through a partnership with NASA. The Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Mission 1, dubbed Ghost Rider in the Sky, was a collaboration between Firefly and NASAs Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which offers fixed contracts to commercial partners. In all, CLPS awarded Firefly $101 million to craft a four-legged lander that could deliver 10 NASA payloads (weighing 340 pounds) to the moons surface. These payloads were designed to study topics like the behavior of lunar dust, the moons internal structure, and the Earths magnetosphere. The mission launched on January 15 and successfully touched down on March 2. It just shows that the private industry, the commercial world, has a lot of affordable, responsive technology and systems that could provide NASA a frequent means to go to the moon and carry out all these high-stakes critical-science missions for lower cost, as well as do it sustainably, Firefly CEO Jason Kim told Fast Company in January. Currently, Firefly is gearing up to complete two more missions for NASA in 2026 and 2028. The companys success, alongside the growing prominence of other players like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, shows that private companies are becoming increasingly powerful in todays space racea trend that may make FLY stock a valuable asset to potential future investors.
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E-Commerce
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