Trump says pharmaceutical tariffs could reach 200%

Pills of the painkiller hydrocodone at a pharmacy in Montpelier, Vt. on Feb. 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he plans to announce tariffs on imported semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, saying the rate for medicines could reach 200 per cent but he would give drugmakers about one year “to get their act together.”

“We’re going to give people about a year, a year and a half to come in and, after that, they’re going to be tariffed,” Trump told reporters, speaking at a meeting of his Cabinet at the White House.

“If they have to bring the pharmaceuticals into the country ... they’re going to be tariffed at a very, very high rate, like 200 per cent. We’ll give them a certain period of time to get their act together,” he said.

“We’re going to be announcing pharmaceuticals, chips and various couple of other things - you know, big ones,” Trump told reporters, while announcing a new tariff rate for copper. He did not offer specifics on when the other announcements would come.

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Details on pharmaceutical tariffs “will come at the end of the month,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC after the Cabinet meeting.

“With pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, those studies are being completed at the end of the month, and so the president will then set his policies then, and I’m going to let him wait to decide how he’s going to do it,” Lutnick said.

The Trump administration launched an investigation into the pharmaceutical industry in April as a bid to impose tariffs on the grounds that extensive reliance on foreign production of medicine is a national security threat.

The U.S. Commerce Department, which is conducting the investigation, has yet to issue the report.

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Reporting by Andrea Shalal; writing by Susan Heavey; editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio