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- Bracing for Trump Tariffs, Both at Home and Abroad
Bracing for Trump Tariffs, Both at Home and Abroad
E.U. Pharmaceutical Industry is Facing Painful Choices; U.S. Businesses and States Sue, Testing Executive Power
Matt Davis
April 28, 2025
You may not know this but Monday is the worst day for newspapers. People are getting their stuff together and don’t want to slow down to read the news. There’s a knock-on effect, which is that newspapers tend to run their dullest, most plodding stories on a Monday morning so they can tell themselves, “hey, we ran the story” but also, “we realized not as many people were going to read it.”
In other words, get on with your day. You don’t need to read this nonsense.
Oh you’re still here? Well, okay. Today’s lead story is plodding indeed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
There are, in fact, two incredibly boring stories under the headline bracing us all for Trump’s idiotic, catastrophic tariffs. The first is about the European pharmaceutical industry. Bottom line?
Pharmaceutical products and chemicals are the bloc’s No. 1 export to America. Among them are the weight-loss blockbuster Ozempic, cancer treatments, cardiovascular drugs and flu vaccines. Most are name-brand drugs that yield a large profit in the American market, with its high prices and vast numbers of consumers.
“These are critical things that keep people alive,” said Léa Auffret, who heads international affairs for BEUC, the European Consumer Organization. “Putting them in the middle of a trade war is highly concerning.”
And yet? When it comes to deeply concerning things, Donald Trump tends not to care. This weekend he kidnapped a couple of kids, after all, and sent them to foreign countries.
Ireland could be particularly hard-hit by a likely 25-percent tariff on EU pharmaceutical products—something the Trump administration is said to be mulling. Germany, Belgium, Denmark and Slovenia, too. In this case tariffs could prompt pharmaceutical firms to shift investment to the U.S. according to analysts.
The European drug lobby group told Ms. von der Leyen that companies could shift production or investment toward the United States to limit their exposure to Mr. Trump’s tariffs, especially when faster approvals and easier access to capital are making America more attractive.
At least 18 members of the group, which includes Bayer, Pfizer and Merck, have planned nearly €165 billion in investments in the European Union over the next five years. As much as half of that could shift to the United States, the federation said. Nor is it alone in that prediction.
What’s interesting about the story is how powerful the drug companies are. They’re able to play governments off against each other for the cheapest place to make Ozempic. It’s amazing to me that Trump is considering a tax on Ozempic, though, when clearly he’s been taking it for some time, now.
I expect the EU will simply offer pharmaceutical firms even more favorable terms to stay in the EU and then Mr. Trump will have to consider what his next move might be. The only winners, really, will be big pharmaceutical companies. Plus ca change.
The other lead story is by Tony Romm and focuses on legal challenges to President Trump’s tariff programs.
Nearly four weeks into a costly global trade war with no end in sight, Mr. Trump is facing a barrage of lawsuits from state officials, small businesses and even once-allied political groups, all contending that the president cannot sidestep Congress and tax virtually any import at levels to his liking.
The lawsuits carry great significance, not just because the tariffs have roiled financial markets and threatened to plunge the United States into a recession. The legal challenges also stand to test Mr. Trump’s claims of expansive presidential power, while illustrating the difficult calculation that his opponents face in deciding whether to fight back and risk retribution.
The major business lobby groups in the U.S. have held off — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, decided it was more efficient to just lobby Mr. Trump to do a U-turn. But private businesses are suing because the tariffs have become so costly that they have little to lose by suing Mr. Trump. And then there are attorneys general who love to act in concert with each other.
Last week, a dozen Democratic attorneys general from states including Colorado, New York and Oregon also asked a federal judge to block many of Mr. Trump’s tariffs on grounds that they had “upended the constitutional order and brought chaos to the American economy.” California sued earlier this month, claiming the president’s policies harmed its economy and budget.
At the heart of the lawsuits is the 1970s law that Mr. Trump has bent to his will to declare tariffs under a state of so-called emergency. It turns out that things aren’t an emergency just because you say they are.
The latest lawsuit arrived Thursday from the Pacific Legal Foundation, a group with reported ties to the conservative donor Charles Koch. On behalf of a clothing company, a board game designer and other small businesses, the group faulted Mr. Trump for imposing an “unlawful and unconstitutional” 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods, resulting in higher prices for American businesses.
It’s amazing to me that the Koch brothers are ideologically to the left of anyone. But they really don’t like it when you start messing with their businesses.
There you go. You read the news. Buy yourself a coffee or something to congratulate yourself because nothing about those stories got me excited. They were just depressing and sad like the impacts of much of the Trump presidency. Still, I appreciate you hanging in there because actually, being willing to be depressed and saddened by the news is an important thing for citizens to do in a functioning democracy.
Now, get on with your week! I insist!
Say, is there a story that might cheer me up a bit?
Oh, sure. Read this story about Steph Curry’s leadership. He’s looking pretty convincing in the playoffs, I’ve got to say. Unlike the Lakers who went down again to the Timberwolves yesterday in a woeful performance.
Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to.
Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.
Standard disclaimer: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each weekday morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”