By Michael Erman, Maggie Fick and Lisa Baertlein
NEW YORK/LONDON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Some drugmakers are taking the unusual step of sending more medicines by air to the U.S., two executives and two logistics firms said amid fears President Donald Trump’s April 2 tariffs announcement could include products made in Europe.
Two European-headquartered drugmakers told Reuters this week they are sending as much of their medicines across the Atlantic as possible over the past several weeks and heard other pharmaceuticals companies were doing the same.
One of the executives said his company was “scenario planning” for possible tariffs and shipping more medicines by air using global cargo and transport firms including the United Parcel Service Inc and Germany’s DHL.
He declined to give more specific details.
A source at a third international drugmaker said they were quickly moving in available stock from overseas in an effort to get ahead of tariffs, but didn’t specify the shipping method.
DHL said it had seen a rise in pharmaceutical exports by air from Europe, but did not give a reason for the increase. UPS declined to comment. FedEx did not directly address the issue.
Pharmaceutical products have long been spared from trade wars due to the potential harms.
But Trump’s move to increase tariffs on goods from China, including finished drugs and raw ingredients, as well as an early round of tariffs between the U.S. and EU on goods like steel and bourbon, has raised expectations that medicines will join the list.
The U.S. depends on medicines partly produced in Europe that bring in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.
Concerns about potential pharma tariffs began before Trump took office in January after he threatened universal import tariffs during his campaign. He has since repeatedly threatened a 25% tariff on pharmaceutical imports and on goods from the EU.
Kuehne and Nagel said it has seen “a couple” of larger pharma shipments to the U.S. – including by air – but it was too early to say whether it was related to tariffs.
Sending goods by plane is quicker than by sea, but significantly pricier. Companies typically use air freight for rare-disease medicines and vaccines which have shorter shelf lives.
The recent volume being transported in planes was above average, the sources said.
The second executive at a drugmaker said his company was “stockpiling” in the United States, the pharma industry’s biggest market worth about $630 billion, a step aimed at easing the immediate blow of tariffs if they are implemented.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity in order to openly discuss their company’s contingency planning for potential tariffs.
In recent months, automakers like General Motors and Mercedes, French cognac makers, and Italian producers of parmesan cheese and sparkling wine have also expedited deliveries to the United States.
UNDER PRESSURE
Several investors and analysts following Europe’s healthcare sector say uncertainty over tariffs is hurting shares in companies such as Danish obesity drug maker Novo Nordisk and Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca.
The European healthcare sub-index was down 0.7% on Thursday at its lowest since January 20.
EU medicine and pharmaceutical product exports to the United States totalled about 90 billion euro ($97.05 billion) in 2023, according to Eurostat.
That included active ingredients for popular medicines such as Botox made by Abbvie, weight-loss drugs Wegovy and Zepbound from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly and Keytruda for cancer by Merck.
Ireland – a top drug exporter to the U.S. – saw a spike in exports of medicines there in January, the latest data from the country’s central statistics office showed.
The data showed Irish exports of medicinal and pharmaceutical products topped 9.4 billion euros – nearly triple December’s figure of 3.2 billion euros and more than double the nearly 4.1 billion euros of drugs shipped out in January 2024.
Drug supply chain expert Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said pharmaceutical exports from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain to the U.S. have also increased this year.
Companies and wholesalers typically hold between 3-6 months of stock if the medicines have a long shelf life, Yadav said.
($1 = 0.9276 euros)
(Reporting by Michael Erman in New York, Maggie Fick in London and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles;Additional reporting by Matthias Inverardi in Düsseldorf and Padraic Halpin in Dublin;Editing by Josephine Mason and David Evans)
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