The U.S. Trade Representative usually goes after countries over tariffs and import rules. This time it's going after Germany over what it pays for medicine.
USTR Jamieson Greer opened a Section 301 probe late Thursday. He called it a case of "persistent underpayment for innovative pharmaceutical products."
Section 301 is the legal tool the trade office uses to hit back at countries it sees as unfair. It famously led to tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods during Trump's first term.
The target here isn't steel or cars. It's the price tag German health insurance puts on U.S.-made drugs.
Trump has spent months pushing what his team calls a "most-favored-nation" drug pricing plan. The goal: close the gap between what Americans pay for prescription drugs and what people in Canada, the UK, or Germany pay for the same meds.
Most of that push has been aimed at U.S. drugmakers like Pfizer and Eli Lilly to bring their U.S. prices down. The Germany probe flips that - pushing a foreign government to pay U.S. companies more.
PhRMA, the big U.S. drug industry group, backed the move. Its president called the probe a fair use of Section 301 against "foreign governments" that have "undervalued innovative medicines."
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Germany has some of the highest drug prices in Europe, and the fastest access to new medicines. Both are now under pressure.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz's government is rushing a health insurance bill through parliament to cut what Germany spends on drugs. Greer called the bill "a serious step backwards."
The fight matters because Germany sets the bar in Europe. When Germany cuts drug prices, other European health systems often follow.
Germany's own pharma lobby has been fighting the same bill from a different angle. The group for about 50 research firms said the bill risks "further weakening Germany as a location for research, production and the early availability of innovative medicines."
So U.S. drugmakers and German drugmakers actually want the same thing here. They just have very different governments behind them.
Section 301 cases usually take months to resolve. Greer left the door open to a faster deal, pointing to the trade agreement the U.S. signed with the UK earlier this year as a model.
If the probe finds Germany acted unfairly, USTR can hit back. That usually means tariffs on German imports - and Germany's top U.S. exports are cars, machinery, and pharmaceuticals.
USTR set a public hearing for Sept. 22 and is taking written comments through Aug. 10.
The big question: whether this stays with Berlin or becomes a template for other major drug markets like France, Japan, and Canada.
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