Customs duties: AstraZeneca laboratory wants to invest 50 billion dollars in the United States

Donald Trump's threat to impose a surtax at an exorbitant rate of 200% on pharmaceutical products appears to be working. The US president raised it again on July 8 , specifying that he would wait a year to implement it, the time it would take for laboratories to set up factories in the United States. Two weeks later, the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced its intention to invest $50 billion by 2030 in the world's largest pharmaceutical market.

While AstraZeneca already generates more than 40% of its global revenue in the United States, it plans to increase this share to 50% in five years. Its CEO, Frenchman Pascal Soriot, is quoted in the press release published Monday night announcing this investment. The latter, he writes, "reinforces our confidence in American innovation in biopharmaceutical products and our commitment to the millions of patients who need our medicines in America and around the world."

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The laboratory plans to build a new factory in the state of Virginia, which will be "AstraZeneca's largest global investment in drug manufacturing," and to strengthen several research and development centers. According to the British daily The Times last month, its CEO is also considering transferring the pharmaceutical group's listing to New York, the largest capitalization on the London Stock Exchange.

The Trump administration applauded the announcement. Howard Lutnick , the Secretary of Commerce, welcomed the decision in the same statement. "For decades, Americans have depended on foreign supplies of essential pharmaceutical products. President Trump and our country's new tariff policies are aimed at addressing this structural weakness," he said.

Several pharmaceutical companies have announced in recent weeks that they are increasing their production in the United States. Eli Lilly is investing $27 billion, and Johnson & Johnson is investing $55 billion over the next four years. German group Merck has inaugurated a vaccine manufacturing plant in North Carolina, a project valued at $1 billion. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis also announced Thursday that it will invest $23 billion in the United States over five years to manufacture key drugs for American patients.

In April, the heads of around thirty pharmaceutical laboratories of all sizes wrote a letter to the President of the European Commission , Ursula von der Leyen , which seemed to be blackmail: only measures favourable to their sector in Europe (from the revision of drug pricing policy to the reduction of environmental regulatory requirements) would prevent the "exodus" of investments from the sector to the United States.