Despite many overseas drugmakers gaining some tariff clarity when the U.S. struck a trade deal with the EU over the summer, Swiss pharma giants like Novartis and Roche were notably left out as their country endured one of President Donald Trump’s steepest levies.
Now, thanks to a fresh accord with the U.S., import tariffs on many key goods from Liechtenstein and Switzerland—including pharmaceuticals—will be capped at 15%, falling in line with the terms in the EU agreement the U.S. signed in August.
Prior to the new trade deal, the U.S. had saddled Switzerland with one of the highest import tariff rates in the world at 39%.
As part of the new framework between the countries, Switzerland plans to “encourage and facilitate” at least $200 billion in investments to the U.S. over the next five years, with a particular emphasis on generating manufacturing and R&D jobs, according to a joint statement (PDF) issued by the Swiss Confederation late last week.
Some $67 billion of that target investment is expected to arrive in 2026, the White House noted in a Nov. 14 fact sheet addressing the trade agreement. The White House spotlighted the “billions of dollars of investment” Swiss companies have already made in the U.S. “in connection with the framework,” singling out commitments by drug juggernauts Roche and Novartis.
Under the deal, Switzerland and Liechtenstein will also open their markets to U.S. medical devices, the White House added in its communique.
Switzerland is home to a thriving biopharma ecosystem as well as several commercial biopharma juggernauts in Roche, Novartis and biosimilar and generics specialist Sandoz. In 2024, the U.S. spent some $35.5 billion on pharmaceutical imports from Switzerland, up nearly $5 billion from the sum the country spent on Swiss drugs in 2023.
But Switzerland, by virtue of being outside the bloc, did not benefit from a U.S.-EU trade deal over the summer, which capped import tariffs on many European goods, including drugs, at 15%.
As the Trump administration inks individual accords with a host of trading partners, the exact nature of pharmaceutical import duties in the U.S. continues to be impacted by a number of moving parts.
In late September, Trump announced via social media that, beginning Oct. 1, the U.S. would slap a 100% tariff on any “branded or patented” pharmaceutical product coming into the country unless the drug’s manufacturer was actively building a local production plant.
But, as October arrived, the rollout of the tariffs was apparently put on hold as the administration sought to give the industry time to engage on another of Trump’s bugbears, drug pricing.
Subsequently, a string of companies—Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Merck KGaA’s U.S. arm EMD Serono—have forged agreements with the U.S. government to sell certain drugs and future medicines at lower prices under a so-called “most favored nation” framework.
In principle, Trump’s most favored nation drug pricing push seeks to align the costs of U.S. medicines with the prices paid in certain other high-income countries.
Each drugmaker that has inked a drug pricing deal with Trump in recent weeks has also won temporary immunity from the president’s pharmaceutical import tariffs. More drug pricing deals are expected to come, but neither Novartis nor Roche have yet to announce such a deal with the U.S.
Still, the crosstown rivals aren’t about to be caught flatfooted around tariffs, with executives at both Roche and Novartis keeping cool on the topic during recent earnings calls.
“I can say that we’ve been in discussions with the U.S. government for most part of this year,” Roche CEO Thomas Schinecker said of the company’s drug pricing talks on a conference call last month. The executive further pointed to Roche’s 13 U.S. manufacturing sites, plus efforts to make its production more efficient in recent years, noting that “there is nothing for us at this stage where we would be concerned” when it comes to tariffs.
Back in April, Roche said it was committing $50 billion to the U.S. over the next five years, with much of the investment pledge centered on manufacturing.
For its part, Novartis has pledged $23 billion to beef up its operations stateside. Most of that outlay will fuel R&D growth, and, while the Swiss drug giant is working on a few manufacturing expansions, those projects will more so be about reallocating resources from other parts of the world to the U.S., Novartis Chief Financial Officer Harry Kirsch told analysts late last month.