U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest threat to impose steep blanket tariffs on a range of imports that includes drugs underscores another key friction point in the economic rivalry between Washington and Beijing: America’s reliance on Chinese medical supplies.
Trump last week said he was considering new duties of around 25% on pharmaceutical products, along with automobiles and semiconductors, as early as April. The tariff rates will “go very substantially higher over a course of a year,” he said, but companies that set up domestic facilities would be exempted.
