The White House Council of Economic Advisers said Monday that the most-favored-nation drug-pricing deals President Donald Trump has struck with 17 pharmaceutical companies could save the U.S. economy $529 billion over the next decade, the administration’s first effort to put a comprehensive price tag on a policy at the heart of his push to cut household costs ahead of the November midterm elections.
Cost-of-living issues have become a dominant concern for voters, and the Iran war has deepened that anxiety. Trump has sought in part to address affordability through his drive to cut prescription drug prices so that U.S. patients no longer pay multiples of what consumers in other affluent nations pay.
“Now you have the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world,” Trump said at a Friday rally before a crowd of seniors in Florida. “And that alone should win us the midterms.”
The analysis, prepared for the White House Council of Economic Advisers and shared with The Associated Press, projects that federal and state governments could save a combined $64.3 billion on Medicaid during the next decade under what Trump calls his “most favored nation” policy. A separate model in the same report tallied potential economy-wide savings at $733 billion over a decade.
Few of the details of the deals with the 17 leading drugmakers have been made public, making it difficult to independently verify the projected savings. The White House has said it has not released the text because the agreements contain highly sensitive data that could move financial markets. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his team would share information that did not include proprietary data or trade secrets.
Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and 17 Senate Democrats responded in April by proposing legislation that would require the administration to disclose the terms.
“If these deals are so great, why is the Trump administration afraid of showing them to the public?” Wyden said when announcing the measure.
Democrats have also pushed back on the administration’s claimed savings by highlighting the financial performance of the companies that have signed on. Staff for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., released an analysis in April that examined 15 of the participating companies and found their combined profits had jumped 66% over the past year, to $177 billion. The report noted that the tax cuts Trump signed into law last year “exempted or delayed many of the most expensive drugs” from price negotiations with Medicare.
The Trump administration has countered that Sanders’ critique relies on list prices for drugs rather than the actual prices patients pay, calling the analysis flawed.
The potential savings claimed by the administration would be substantial: Americans spent $467 billion on prescription drugs in 2024, according to the most recent government data. The White House analysis is premised on the assumption that foreign countries would also pay more for their drugs, diversifying drugmakers’ revenue sources and preserving their ability to develop new treatments.
Outside economists noted that any savings might not reach patients directly, since many already pay discounted prices through their insurance.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in October 2024 that a plan similar to what Trump adopted could reduce prescription drug prices by more than 5%, but the decrease “would probably diminish over time as manufacturers adjusted to the new policy by altering prices or distribution of drugs in other countries.”
The scope of the administration’s figures is likely to intensify Democratic scrutiny. Critics argue that any price reductions would be offset by higher costs for drugs not covered by the most-favored-nation framework, and that pharmaceutical companies have increased their profit margins even as they work with the administration.