Beaten down under Biden, big pharma hopes for new chapter under Trump
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The past two years have been punishing for the biotech and pharma space. As Wall Street chased the artificial-intelligence boom, drugmakers were left behind, with pharma stocks trading at a major discount to the broader market.
The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF, meanwhile, was basically unchanged last year despite huge gains for innovation counterparts in the tech sector. Politics hasn’t helped. After decades of wielding significant influence in Washington, the pharma lobby suffered a major blow when the Biden administration pushed through Medicare’s drug-price negotiation law.
Now as Donald Trump takes office, the industry is cautiously optimistic that its fortunes might finally begin to shift—or at least not get any worse. At last week’s annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, industry executives pointed to Trump’s promises to cut taxes and to crack down on pharmacy-benefit managers as evidence that his policies might benefit the industry as a whole. While Trump’s victory and his decision to name Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. as his top health official initially unsettled executives and investors, many are now warming up to the new administration. No one is betting that Trump will suddenly fall in love with big pharma.
During his first administration he repeatedly railed against the industry and tried to pass a rule linking some Medicare drug prices to international drug prices. But at this point an unpredictable leader, some argue, is better than a predictably unfriendly one. During a lunch with reporters in San Francisco, Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla was particularly blunt, describing the previous administration as heavily influenced by progressive priorities on everything
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