Donald Trump has announced that the United States will slap a 100 per cent tariff on  any pharmaceuticals entering the US from next week. 

The US President said will impose a 100 per cent tariff on all imports of branded or patented pharmaceutical products from October 1, unless a pharmaceutical company is building a factory in the US.

It comes just 36 hours after Anthony Albanese managed to snag a selfie with Trump. 

The two men are due to have their first one-on-one meeting on October 20 and securing a tariff exemption will no doubt be top of the Prime Minister's agenda given pharmaceuticals are one of Australia's largest exports to the US. 

'Starting October 1st, 2025, we will be imposing g a 100% Tariff on any branded or patented Pharmaceutical Product, unless a Company IS BUILDING their Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plant in America,' Trump posted on Truth Social. 

'"IS BUILDING" will be defined as, "breaking ground" and/or "under construction." 

'There will, therefore, be no Tariff on these pharmaceutical products if construction has started.'

The US President also introduced a range of other tariffs, including a 50 per cent import tax on kitchen cabinets, 30 per cent on upholstered furniture and 25 per cent on heavy trucks.

He insisted the move was to protect US manufacturers from 'unfair outside competition'.  

'The reason for this is the large scale "FLOODING" of these products into the United States by other outside Countries,' Trump posted on Truth Social. 

'It is a very unfair practice, but we must protect, for National Security and other reasons, our Manufacturing process. Thank you for your attention to this matter!'

Australia exported $2.2billion in pharmaceutical products to the US last year.

This equates to around 40 per cent of Australia's total pharmaceutical exports, according to the United Nations Comtrade database. 

However, the vast majority of those exports relate to one Australian company, CSL.

CSL sends vast quantities of plasma and other blood products to the US, according to the ABC. 

healthcare stocks were down -1.7 per cent with CSL shares at a five-year low, according to CommSec. 

Health Minister Mark Butler said the government was 'working to understand the implications of the announcement'. 

‘None of these latest announcements from the US administration make a jot of difference to our determination to protect he PBS,' he told reporters on Friday afternoon.

‘The PBS has served Australians so incredibly well in terms of providing affordable access to the world’s best medicines we are determined to do everything to protect that PBS.’

Trump has previously vented his frustration that drug companies are able to sell pharmaceuticals cheaper to other countries under programs like the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has previously insisted that tariffs were an 'act of economic self-harm' and has said the PBS is off limits.

'This is not for sale and is not up for negotiation. This is a part of the free trade agreement (with the US) because Labor insisted as a condition of our support for the free trade agreement,' Albanese said in March.

'The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is a part of who we are as Australians and we will always stand up for it.'

The Daily Mail has contacted the Department of Health for comment. 

In a joint statment from Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, Shadow Health Minister Anne Ruston and Shadow Trade Minister Kevin Hogan, the Coalition said they strongly opposed the 'harmful tariffs'.  

'The 100 per cent tariff announced today puts this critical trade at risk, as well as the jobs thousands of people it employs and the savings Australians have invested in this sector,' the statement said. 

'Australia has an export trade in pharmaceuticals to the US valued at over $2 billion.

'This is a shocking but unsurprising development and it is moments like this when a strong direct relationship with the President of the United States is critical to help save Aussie jobs. 

'While other leaders are able to pick up the phone to the President, Anthony Albanese has not established such a relationship.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15135489/Trumps-devastating-new-100-cent-tariff-blow-Australia-just-days-posed-grinning-selfie-Albo.html

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Australia must ‘step up to prevent catastrophic and preventable loss of life’ amid Trump cuts, former CDC boss says

BY Melissa Davey 

Australia must “step up to prevent catastrophic and preventable loss of life” after US funding cuts to national and global health programs and institutions, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

Dr Tom Frieden, who served as director of the CDC until 2017 under Barack Obama, spoke to Guardian Australia about what countries that share close partnerships with the US need to do after a series of executive actions and cuts under president Donald Trump.

From day one of his second term in office, Trump sought to freeze foreign aid, including dissolving the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

He ordered that the US withdraw from the World Health Organization(WHO); proposed a more than 50% reduction in CDC funding; eliminated 2,400 CDC jobs (about 700 of those roles have since been reinstated), and slashed the staff and budgets of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH).

In February, the anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr was appointed as the US secretary of health and human services, despite holding no formal health credentials, and has since pushed vaccine misinformation. Since then, more than US$1bn in funding cuts have been made to Gavi, a global alliance that helps buy vaccines for the world’s poorest children.

“The CDC has long been a cornerstone of collaboration, information sharing, expertise and rapid response capacity,” Frieden says.

“When those systems are dismantled, there can be life-and-death global consequences. The US decision to stop funding Gavi and cut other global health programs is heartbreaking and could cost millions of lives, especially of children.”

Over the next decade, US cuts to health aid for tuberculosis and HIV programs alone could result in “millions of additional childhood tuberculosis cases and deaths” in low and middle-income countries, according to a paper published in October in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health Journal.

“Halving malaria and tuberculosis funding and cutting support to WHO undermines decades of progress and weakens our collective defence against future pandemics,” Frieden says.

“Health is not a zero-sum game. When one country is healthy, it strengthens its neighbours and the world. If the US retreats, others must step up to prevent catastrophic and preventable loss of life.”

 Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads

A spokesperson for the Australian government’s Department of Health, Disability and Ageing says investing in global health is essential “… to better protect the health and wellbeing of the Australian community, our region and the world”.

The WHO is undergoing a comprehensive restructure as a result of the US funding cuts, and the spokesperson says Australia is “taking an active role in WHO’s strategic realignment and reprioritisation, including focusing its efforts on country-level activities, providing a hub for global health data, responding to health emergencies, and normative work and technical standards”.

At a national level, the establishment of an Australian CDC, set to launch in January, will provide independent, transparent and evidence-based public health advice, “bringing together critical information and experts from across government,” the spokesperson says.

Frieden says it is essential for countries to invest in their own disease surveillance systems, as Australia is doing in forming its own CDC.

He adds: “The foundation of every resilient health system is primary health care; it’s the most cost-effective, efficient and high-impact way to save lives.

“Investing in primary health care, along with robust disease surveillance, laboratory capacity and rapid data sharing, builds preparedness.”

The director of infectious diseases at Monash Health, Prof Allen Cheng, previously served as co-chair of the Australia Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, and was chair of the Advisory Committee for Vaccines, advising Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration on vaccine regulation.

Cheng says that although Australia does consider US guidance and decisions when approving medicines or setting health guidance, “Australia generally has the capacity to make its own decisions” and works with international agencies beyond the US.

“I’m less concerned about the impact on Australia than for other countries with less resilient health systems – the Ebola outbreak in DRC for example,” Cheng says.

“There is often a small window to get control of outbreaks early, and the US CDC is often involved early,” Cheng says.

“While public health workers locally and from other countries hopefully will respond effectively, it doesn’t help if the CDC aren’t able to help.

“And while the risk to Australia from Ebola in DRC is very low, that could well change if an outbreak progresses.”

He says the Australian CDC will have some work to do in building trust to counter a “flood of disinformation” coming from once-trusted US health institutions.

“We would usually regard advice from governments and public health agencies to be credible and reliable, but we’re now having to look twice at everything coming from the US to check.”

Frieden also warns that cuts to staffing and funding to US health agencies could make it harder for those agencies to review new drugs thoroughly, something other countries will need to be aware of.

“Misinformation can put pressure on the agency to make decisions based on ideology instead of evidence,” Frieden says. “We’ve already seen this with the FDA’s decision not to authorise Covid vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women.”

But he believes that “evidence, persistence and truth can overcome even the most entrenched opposition”.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/oct/26/australia-must-step-up-avoid-loss-life-amid-trump-cuts-tom-frieden-former-cdc

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.