Will Europe never learn?America’s ostensible friends keep taking advantage of us, only to be shocked when President Donald Trump holds them accountable.First, Europe refused to pay for its own defense, until the president threatened to pull out of NATO.
Then Europe refused to break unfair barriers to American trade, until the president hit those nations with massive tariffs.Now the Trump administration is targeting Germany for stealing U.S.
medicines.The president won’t back down until Germany stops the blatant theft — and starts giving Americans the lower drug prices we deserve.On June 18, the Trump administration launched a major investigation into German drug pricing.
U.S.Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced this move after Germany proposed paying less for drugs developed in America.
Regardless of whether that proposal moves forward, Germany already pays too little for American-made drugs.The country is unfairly hurting U.S.
innovation and workers while sticking Americans with higher costs.Like most European countries, Germany has been bilking America for decades.The country has forced pharmaceutical companies to sell their drugs at steep discounts, making the medicines artificially cheap.
Yet drugs aren’t cheap, and it takes U.S.companies about $2.7 billion on average to bring a new pharmaceutical to market.
Companies have to cover those costs, so they can keep investing in the next generation of innovative treatments.If they don’t recoup the money, they can’t employ so many U.S.
workers, much less cure diseases like cancer.TRUMP EXPANDS TRUMPRX PRESCRIPTION DRUG DISCOUNT PROGRAM TO MORE THAN 800 MEDICATIONSBottles of medicine ride on a belt at a mail-in pharmacy warehouse in Florence, N.J., in July 2018.(AP/Julio Cortez)By mandating steep pricing discounts, Germany is shifting high costs to Americans.
For the most expensive drugs, Americans already pay four times more than Germans.But that’s unjust.
Germans are taking the...