How would that not significantly harm the pharmaceutical companies? Don't they make a decent percentage of their revenue off of brands which are currently price protected via these tariffs?
As lostapathy explained below, US prices are currently high because that's where pharmaceutical companies are capturing their profits. In fact, even European pharmaceutical companies make most of their revenue from sales in the US, not Europe. (This is why the US funds over 50% of R&D for the entire world, even though it only has 300 million people, and many of the largest pharmaceutical companies are based in Europe, not the US).
If reimportation were permitted[0], pharmaceutical companies would adjust the prices of drugs across those countries, which would bring drug prices in the US and Europe in line with one another.
Ultimately, pharmaceutical companies would still be able to make the same amount of money off the drugs, but it would distribute the sources of that money more evenly across the people who are actually using the drugs (and benefiting from the research and development).
[0] it would almost certainly only apply to reimports of drugs from other NATO countries (more or less), because those are the countries that abide by US patent law on drugs (India and China, by contrast, do not recognize US patent law on large classes of drugs),
This just isn't true. Take Norvatis for example, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. The US makes 35% of their revenue and Europe another 35%, with the rest of the world sharing the rest. [0]
I wouldn't call that "most of their revenue". In fact, I don't see anything out of the ordinary about revenue gained per customer, given the size and purchasing power of the US.
There's little evidence to suggest that higher drug prices actually help the drug companies.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/294631/novartis-revenue-...
Not sure exactly what numbers you're basing that on, but I believe a significant portion of that research (especially basic level stuff) is government funded, which is not a good argument for allowing pharma companies to keep prices high.
Nope, government funding is tracked separately.
Yes. If consumers and/or pharmacies in the US could easily and reliably source cheaper brand-name drugs from international markets where price ceilings are in effect, it would ruin many drug companies, especially smaller ones.
Those price ceilings only exist because of the artificial trade barrier between the US and those other countries. Without that trade barrier, pharmaceutical companies would charge roughly equivalent prices in the US and other countries. It wouldn't ruin drug companies at all.
You do know that many nations impose price controls on pharmaceutical products inside their own borders, right?
> That it was the spirit of monopoly which originally both invented and propagated this doctrine cannot be doubted; and they who first taught it were by no means such fools as they who believed it. In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind.
Not really - countries like China and India don't recognize US (or European) pharmaceutical patents to begin with, so they're not bound to purchasing brand-name drugs from the original manufacturer.