The announcement of a 15% tariff on pharmaceutical imports to the U.S. from the EU may have not been the ideal backdrop for the busiest week of European pharma earnings this quarter, but CEOs appeared to be unfazed.
Monday saw a trade agreement sketched out between the U.S. and the EU, with pharmaceutical imports—along with almost all goods entering the U.S. from the bloc—subject to a 15% tariff.
This baseline 15% rate is separate from the sector-specific tariffs President Donald Trump has proposed multiple times this year, and it still isn’t entirely clear how those sectoral tariffs—and the results of a Section 232 investigation into the national security implications of U.S. pharmaceutical imports—might add to or replace the rate agreed upon with the EU.
The U.S. Department of Commerce did not respond to Fierce Pharma’s request for clarification this week, and some pharma executives also admitted they were awaiting more details.
British-Swedish company AstraZeneca was first up to the plate on Tuesday. In a second-quarter earnings call with journalists, CEO Pascal Soriot was sanguine about the impact of the tariffs.
When it comes to producing medicines for the U.S. market, the company is “almost self-sufficient in terms of supply,” Soriot pointed out.
“There's a couple of products that are not made in the U.S., but we are rapidly transferring the supply to the U.S., because we have the capacity,” Soriot said. The CEO reminded journalists that just last week the company announced plans to build a new manufacturing plant as part of a $4 billion investment in the “beautiful state” of Virginia.
“Within a few months, we will be completely self-sufficient and supplying U.S. patients out of the U.S. for all our products,” Soriot added. “So tariffs is not an issue that is really affecting us very much.”
AstraZeneca has already met with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and “many other members of the administration” to discuss “how we can invest and how we can actually help deliver medicines to patients in America that are made in America,” Soriot said on the call.
Next up on Wednesday was British pharma GSK, and CEO Emma Walmsley stressed that the threat of tariffs hadn’t dented the London-based company’s optimistic financial outlook.
“In terms of the EU-U.S. tariffs indicated earlier this week, we are including those in the guidance, which once again, we've focused at the upper end of our range,” she said on a call.
“But there still is quite a lot of more detail to come through so we [can] understand the precision of what may or may not be enacted, including, of course, the 232 investigation,” Walmsley added.
“But, as we said last quarter, I'm very pleased with the way that GSK has been positioned to set up for that in a variety of measures,” added the CEO, who reaffirmed the company’s plans to invest “tens of billions of dollars in the U.S. over the next five years.”
GSK is “in continued dialogue” with the U.S. administration “alongside others in the industry,” according to Walmsley.
Thursday, it was Sanofi’s turn to field questions on the tariffs. On a call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer François-Xavier Roger said the French pharma doesn’t expect the tariffs to impact its guidance for the year.
“It's difficult to comment on what we don't know, but we have run different scenarios,” Roger said on the July 31 call. “Obviously, based on what is widely reported in the media, we have looked at the impact that it could have on 2025—given that we are already fairly well advanced in the year—and we confirmed we did not factor it in our guidance.”
The tariffs are only likely to have a “limited impact” this year because the Paris-based pharma “already [has] inventory in place in the U.S.,” he explained.
This relatively relaxed view of the tariffs was even shared by Netherlands-based Pharming, which markets the acute angioedema attack med Ruconest and the rare immune disease drug Joenja.
“We are working on options to mitigate the impact of recently announced U.S. tariffs,” the Dutch drugmaker said in its own earnings release (PDF) Thursday. “Although some uncertainties remain—such as potential tariff exclusions—we do not expect a material impact on our business.”