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Trump has been playing a shell game with the markets on tariff news in what appears to be a bid to keep away market crashes and bad headlines. On late Friday night, it was reported that exemptions would be given to some chips and electronics.
On Sunday, Trump’s Commerce Secretary took that back and added the news that the administration would be doing a special tariff on prescription drugs in a month or two.
Video:
Transcript via ABC’s This Week:
Well, if you remember, over the past couple of months President Trump has called out pharmaceuticals and semiconductors and autos. He called them sector tariffs. And those are not available for negotiation. They are just going to be part of making sure we reshore the core national security items that need to be made in this country. We need to make medicine in this country. We learned it during Covid. We need to make it in this country. We need to make semiconductors. Because if we don’t own semiconductors here, remember, all – virtually all semiconductors are made now in Taiwan and they’re finished in China. It’s important that we reshore them.
And so the president is going to come out with his policies on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. They’re going to be outside the reciprocal tariffs. And he was just making sure everyone understood that all of these products are outside the reciprocal tariffs and they are going to have their own separate way of being considered.
KARL: But – but – but, wait a minute, I’m – I’m asking you about the exemption, not about – I mean the – the notice that went out Friday night saying that electronics, a wide range of electronics, including smartphones, including components used to make microchips, that these are now exempt from the reciprocal tariffs. Why that move?
LUTNICK: Well, remember, those products are going to be part of the semiconductor sectoral tariffs which are coming. So, you’re going to see this week there will be a register in the federal registry. There will be a notice put out. That is different types of work.
So, we’re going to do that. We did that in autos. The president is going to do it for pharmaceuticals. I think he’s going to do it for semiconductors. So, all those products are going to come under semiconductors, and they’re going to have a special focus-type of tariff to make sure that those products get restored.
Companies can’t pick up a factory and move it to the United States. These moves take years. The Trump administration will be over before any of these moves become a reality, which is why they won’t happen. Companies can either move their production to places with low tariffs or they can pass the tariff on to the American people.
Trump is going to raise the price of life saving and sustaining medicines in the United States through a tax on the drugs that we need to keep ourselves healthy and alive.
The media is focused on the increasing price of electronics, but not everyone buys an electronic device. However, if the price of antibiotics, cancer drugs, or diabetes medication increases, the American people will have their quality of life impacted.
Health insurance companies will respond to the higher prices by either increasing co-pays or covering less medicine.
What Lutnick was talking about is a tax on prescription drugs, and while it may not matter to media elites and billionaires in the Trump administration, it could be the difference between life and death for many Americans.
What do you think about the tariff on prescription drugs? Join the discussion in the comments below.
