On April 8, local time, US President Trump gave a speech saying that the United States will impose tariffs on drugs.

Trump said that the United States does not produce its own drugs and other products that improve health. The price the United States pays for drugs is often many times higher than that of countries that produce drugs. Trump believes that once tariffs are imposed on drugs, pharmaceutical companies will open factories in the United States because the United States is the "largest market."
Last week, Trump announced a wide range of tariffs on US imports that did not involve drugs, but he said that drugs would face separate taxes.

European pharmaceutical companies have warned in a meeting with the President of the European Commission on the 8th that US tariffs will accelerate the trend of the industry shifting from Europe to the United States. The pharmaceutical industry trade lobbying organization EFPIA (whose members include European pharmaceutical giants Bayer, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, etc.) said it has called on the President of the European Union to promote "rapid and fundamental action" to mitigate the "risk of outflow" to the United States.

Lawrence Summers, professor of economics at Harvard University and former U.S. Treasury Secretary, said on the 8th that due to the tariff measures being implemented by the Trump administration, the United States may currently be heading towards a recession, which may cause about 2 million Americans to lose their jobs and each family will face at least $5,000 in income losses.

Summers said that Trump's tariff plan will face "very important choices" in the coming weeks. The scale of these tariff plans even exceeds the tariffs in 1930, which "exacerbated the Great Depression." Summers believes that the wise approach is to "withdraw the policies that have been announced."

He also said that the economic recession challenges facing the United States this time are caused by the words and deeds of President Trump and his government. If the U.S. government abandons its "policy errors," the economy will return to normal.

Trump signed an executive order on the so-called "reciprocal tariffs" at the White House on the 2nd, announcing that the United States will impose a 10% "minimum base tariff" on trading partners and impose higher tariffs on certain trading partners.

Although Trump claims that the tariffs will help bring in revenue for the US government, reverse the trade deficit, and revitalize the US manufacturing industry, economists and business people warn that these tariffs will push up prices, hurt the interests of US consumers and US companies, disrupt global trade, and be detrimental to global economic development.

In addition, UN Secretary-General Guterres reiterated the UN's position on the 8th that there are no winners in a trade war.

Guterres said that the trade war is extremely negative, no one can win from it, and everyone is often a loser. Guterres said that he is particularly worried about the most vulnerable developing countries because the impact will be more serious for them.

Guterres said that he hopes there will be no economic recession because once there is a recession, the consequences will be catastrophic, especially hitting the world's poorest people.

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