Faced with Donald Trump's threat of tariffs on the pharmaceutical sector, British giant AstraZeneca has announced that it will invest $50 billion in the United States by 2030 to manufacture drugs and fund its research programs.
This investment "reinforces our confidence in American innovation (...) and our commitment to the millions of patients who need our medicines in America and around the world," said AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot in a statement published overnight Monday to Tuesday.
In the name of rebalancing trade relations in favor of the United States, Donald Trump imposed a minimum surcharge of 10% on imports in April. Pharmaceuticals are exempt, but the Trump administration launched an investigation into the sector's imports that same month.
Then, in early July, the American president said he was considering a 200% surcharge on pharmaceutical products. He specified that he would wait at least a year to implement it, to give companies time to build factories on American soil.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick subsequently assured that the procedures leading to the implementation of customs duties on pharmaceutical products should be concluded "by the end of the month."
– World’s leading market –
"For decades, Americans have relied on foreign supplies of essential pharmaceuticals. President Trump and our country's new tariff policies are aimed at addressing this structural weakness," Lutnick said, quoted in the AstraZeneca statement.
The British laboratory, which announced in April that it would begin transferring part of its European production to the United States, is not the first to line up a massive investment in the country, the world's largest drug market, to show its credentials.
In the spring, groups such as Roche, Novartis, Sanofi, etc. announced more than $200 billion in additional cumulative investments in the United States.
AstraZeneca announced on Tuesday a new factory in Virginia that will be "AstraZeneca's largest global investment in drug manufacturing."
In total, the company estimates that it will create tens of thousands of new direct and indirect jobs in the country, its largest market, where it has 19 sites and already employs more than 18,000 people.
Tuesday's announcement comes on top of $3.5 billion in investments in the country announced last year. These sums "will contribute to AstraZeneca's ambition to reach $80 billion in revenue by 2030," of which "50% will be generated in the United States," according to the laboratory.
– United Kingdom abandoned –
But these billions of dollars invested risk causing some unrest in the United Kingdom, where the group is based and where the announcement in January that it was abandoning a £450 million vaccine factory project, blaming a lack of government support, was seen as a blow.
"Chief Executive Pascal Soriot had then suggested that AstraZeneca was not tied to any particular country and that it would invest where it made financial sense," recalls Russ Mould, an analyst at AJ Bell.
But as AstraZeneca strengthens its presence across the Atlantic, "investor pressure is likely to mount for it to move its primary listing to the United States," the analyst adds. This possibility has already been considered by its boss, The Times reported in early July.
A stock market exit would be a shock for the British financial center, which is seeking to revive its attractiveness since Brexit, especially since the group is one of the companies with the highest capitalization in the FTSE 100, the main index of the London Stock Exchange.
AstraZeneca, which reported a 34% increase in net profit to $2.92 billion in the first quarter, generated more than 40% of its revenue in the United States during this period.
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