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drug prices
Stop Pretending Trump Has a Coherent Economic Strategy
It is bad for the country and the world that policy in the United States is being determined by a man child who has no idea what he is doing beyond stuffing his pockets, but that is the reality.
Oct 28, 2025
It is striking that many people feel the need to claim that President Donald Trump has some coherent economic plan for the country. It’s understandable that Trump’s team likes to pretend that his random ramblings and angry acts of revenge are all part of some grand strategy, but why would anyone not on his payroll play along with this obvious absurdity?
To anyone paying attention, it should be pretty clear that Donald Trump is clueless about the economy. Just to take an obvious example to make the point: Trump has repeatedly promised to lower drug prices by 800, 900, or even 1,500%. As he rightly says, no one thought it was possible.
It wouldn’t be a big deal that he got confused once or twice and forgot that you can’t lower prices by more than 100%, unless you envision drug companies paying people to use their drugs. But Trump has done this repeatedly, over many months.
This tells us two things. First, he really doesn’t have even a basic understanding of arithmetic and percentages. That would be bad in and of itself. After all the president is sometimes directly negotiating deals, and it would be bad if he agreed to something and then had to call back his negotiating partner and tell them he didn’t understand what he had agreed to.
There may be a market for thoughtful pieces describing the grand Trump strategy in major intellectual outlets, but that is yet one more example of market failure.
But the other issue is even more serious. Surely people like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Kevin Hassett, Trump’s national economic adviser, understand percentages. But apparently, they are too scared of Trump to explain how they work. Instead, they let him go out week after week and make a fool of himself by making nonsensical promises on lowering drug prices.
This fact is crucial if we are trying to assess whether Trump has a coherent economic strategy. The point is he is obviously confused about many things when it comes to the economy. He seems to think that other countries pay tariffs and send the US checks. He also seems to think that wind and solar power are very expensive sources of energy. And he seems to think that the economy was collapsing when he took office.
All of these claims are 180° at odds with reality, but it is extremely unlikely that his aides would be able to correct him on these or other absurd views that Trump seems to hold. Given how out of touch Trump is with reality and the inability of his aides to correct him on anything, why would anyone think that he has a coherent economic strategy?
As many of us have pointed out, even most hardcore free traders will concede tariffs can serve a useful purpose. They can be used strategically to build up important industries. This is what Joe Biden tried to do when he used tariffs, along with subsidies and regulatory changes, to promote domestic production of advanced computer chips, electric vehicles, batteries, and wind and solar and other forms of clean energy.
But what is the coherence in a tariff policy when some of the highest tariffs, like Trump’s 50% tariff on imported steel, are reserved for intermediate goods that are inputs for other manufacturing industries? How does it make sense to impose an extra 10 percentage point tariff on imports from Canada because Trump didn’t like a television ad they ran during the World Series? And India got whacked with a tariff of 50% on its exports because its president would not support Trump’s drive to get a Nobel Peace Prize.
Anyone trying to weave together these and other tariff decisions by Trump, along with many other economic decisions he has made since taking office, is really stretching if they think they can find anything coherent. It is bad for the country and the world that policy in the United States is being determined by a man child who has no idea what he is doing beyond stuffing his pockets, but that is the reality.
There may be a market for thoughtful pieces describing the grand Trump strategy in major intellectual outlets, but that is yet one more example of market failure. There ain’t nothing there.
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Trump-GOP Giveaway to Big Pharma Will Hit Taxpayers With $9 Billion in Higher Drug Costs
"Donald Trump and Republicans are selling out America's seniors," said one advocate.
Oct 21, 2025
A major pharmaceutical industry handout that Republicans—with the support of one Senate Democrat—included in President Donald Trump's signature legislative package is expected to cost US taxpayers nearly twice as much as originally expected, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in an updated analysis released Monday.
The CBO initially projected that the provision, known as the ORPHAN Cures Act, would cost around $5 billion over the next decade. But the office said Monday that its earlier assessment did not take into account several major, high-priced drugs that will be exempted from Medicare price negotiations as a result of the Trump-GOP law.
The budget office said it now expects the provision of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act to cost $8.8 billion over the next 10 years.
Among the drugs included in the new CBO analysis is Keytruda, a cancer medication sold by Merck that carries a list price of $24,062 every six weeks. The Trump GOP-budget law delays Keytruda's eligibility for Medicare price negotiations by at least a year, postponing significant potential savings for taxpayers and patients.
Merith Basey, executive director of Patients for Affordable Drugs Now, said in response to the updated CBO analysis that "the ORPHAN Cures Act is a wildly expensive handout to Big Pharma that will harm patients, drain taxpayer dollars, and weaken the government's ability to rein in high drug prices."
Basey noted that the "insatiable" pharmaceutical industry is not satisfied with the enactment of the ORPHAN Cures Act, which restricts Medicare price negotiations for drugs that treat more than one rare disease. Big Pharma, Basey said, is "spending record sums this year to advance additional carveouts like the EPIC Act, which would exempt even more blockbuster drugs from negotiation."
"Any support for these bills goes against the will of the 90% of Americans who want Congress to go further to lower drug prices—not facilitate another handout to Big Pharma," said Basey.
"This isn't about helping lower costs—it's about doing the bidding of big drug companies, and Trump and the GOP are all too happy to oblige."
The deep-pocketed pharmaceutical industry has waged war on the popular Medicare price negotiation program since its inception during the Biden administration.
While pharmaceutical giants' efforts to gut the program have been stymied in court, the industry-friendly Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have done pharma's bidding through legislation and executive action. Earlier this year, as Common Dreams reported, Trump signed an executive order aimed at delaying price negotiations for a broad category of medications despite the president's repeated promises to bring down costs.
"Trump and Republicans are selling out America's seniors," said Brad Woodhouse, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Care. "Instead of letting Medicare negotiate lower prices for more drugs, they carved out a loophole to protect the industry's most profitable drugs."
"Not only does the GOP tax bill throw over 15 million Americans off their healthcare and hike costs for millions more, but it also forces older Americans to pay more for life-saving medicines while CEOs and billionaires line their pockets with more money than they know what to do with," Woodhouse continued. "This isn't about helping lower costs—it's about doing the bidding of big drug companies, and Trump and the GOP are all too happy to oblige."
Steve Knievel, access to medicines advocate at Public Citizen, said Monday that "instead of transferring $10 billion from taxpayers and cancer patients to drug corporations that are already extremely profitable, President Trump and members of Congress must work to strengthen and expand Medicare drug price negotiations."
"Instead of gutting the law through bills like the ORPHAN Cures Act, EPIC Act, and MINI Act so Big Pharma can block negotiations on blockbuster treatments," Knievel added, "Congress should pass legislation to empower Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices on all costly medicines and allow all patients to access lower, negotiated prices, even if they don't have Medicare."
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'Heinrich Should Be Ashamed': Lone Senate Dem Helps GOP Deliver Big Pharma Win
The provision, part of the Senate budget bill, was described as "a blatant giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that would keep drug prices high for patients while draining $5 billion in taxpayer dollars."
Jul 01, 2025
The deep-pocketed and powerful pharmaceutical industry notched a significant victory on Monday when the Senate parliamentarian ruled that a bill described by critics as a handout to drug corporations can be included in the Republican reconciliation package, which could become law as soon as this week.
The legislation, titled the Optimizing Research Progress Hope and New (ORPHAN) Cures Act, would exempt drugs that treat more than one rare disease from Medicare's drug-price negotiation program, allowing pharmaceutical companies to charge exorbitant prices for life-saving medications in a purported effort to encourage innovation. (Medications developed to treat rare diseases are known as "orphan drugs.")
The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen observed that if the legislation were already in effect, Medicare "would have been barred from negotiating lower prices for important treatments like cancer drugs Imbruvica, Calquence, and Pomalyst."
Among the bill's leading supporters is Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), whose spokesperson announced the parliamentarian's decision to allow the measure in the reconciliation package after previously advising that it be excluded. Heinrich is listed as the legislation's only co-sponsor in the Senate, alongside lead sponsor Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).
"Sen. Heinrich should be ashamed of prioritizing drug corporation profits over lower medicine prices for seniors and people with disabilities," Steve Knievel, access to medicines advocate at Public Citizen, said in a statement Monday. "Patients and consumers breathed a sigh of relief when the Senate parliamentarian stripped the proposal from Republicans' Big Ugly Betrayal, so it comes as a gut punch to hear that Sen. Heinrich welcomed the reversal and continued to champion a proposal that will transfer billions from taxpayers to Big Pharma."
"People across the country are demanding lower drug prices and for Medicare drug price negotiations to be expanded, not restricted," Knievel added. "Sen. Heinrich should apologize to his constituents and start listening to them instead of drug corporation lobbyists."
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a lobbying group whose members include pharmaceutical companies, has publicly endorsed and promoted the legislation, urging lawmakers to pass it "as soon as possible."
"This is a blatant giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that would keep drug prices high for patients."
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the ORPHAN Cures Act would cost U.S. taxpayers around $5 billion over the next decade.
Merith Basey, executive director of Patients For Affordable Drugs Now, said that "patients are infuriated to see the Senate cave to Big Pharma by reviving the ORPHAN Cures Act at the eleventh hour."
"This is a blatant giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that would keep drug prices high for patients while draining $5 billion in taxpayer dollars," said Basey. "We call on lawmakers to remove this unnecessary provision immediately and stand with an overwhelming majority of Americans who want the Medicare Negotiation program to go further. Medicare negotiation will deliver huge savings for seniors and taxpayers; this bill would undermine that progress."
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