Trump signs executive order setting 30-day deadline for drugmakers to lower prescription drug costs

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday signed a sweeping executive order setting a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to electively lower the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. or face new limits down the road over what the government will pay.

The order calls on the health department, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to broker new price tags for drugs over the next month. If deals are not reached, Kennedy will be tasked with developing a new rule that ties the price the U.S. pays for medications to lower prices paid by other countries.

“We're going to equalize,” Trump said during a Monday morning press conference. “We're all going to pay the same. We're going to pay what Europe pays.”

It's unclear what — if any — impact the Republican president's executive order will have on millions of Americans who have private health insurance. The federal government has the most power to shape the price it pays for drugs covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

Trump's promised new — but uncertain — savings on drug prices, just hours after the Republican-led House released its new plan to trim $880 billion from Medicaid.

Taxpayers spend hundreds of billions of dollars on prescription drugs, injectables, transfusions and other medications every year through Medicare, which covers nearly 70 million older Americans. Medicaid, which provides nearly-free health care for almost 80 million poor and disabled people in the U.S. also spends tens of billions of dollars each year for drugs.

The nation's pharmaceutical lobby, which represents the top U.S. drugmakers, immediately pushed back against Trump's order, calling it a “bad deal” for American patients. Drugmakers have long argued that any threats to their profits could impact the research they do to develop new drugs.

“Importing foreign prices from socialist countries would be a bad deal for American patients and workers," Stephen J. Ubl, the president and CEO of PhRMA, said in a statement. "It would mean less treatments and cures and would jeopardize the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America."

Trump's so-called “most favored nation” approach to Medicare drug pricing has been controversial since he first tried to implement it during his first term. He signed a similar executive order in the final weeks of his presidency, which called for the U.S. to only pay a lower price that other countries pay for some drugs — such as injectables or cancer drugs given through infusions — administered in a doctor's office.

That narrow executive order faced hurdles, with a court order that blocked the rule from going into effect under President Joe Biden's administration. The pharmaceutical industry argued that Trump’s 2020 attempt would give foreign governments the “upper hand” in deciding the value of medicines in the U.S.

The concept also remains unpopular with many in his own party. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., noted to reporters on Monday that it would be “fairly controversial” if Trump had tried to push through the policy legislatively, rather than via an executive order.

Trump repeatedly defended pharmaceutical companies, instead blaming other countries for the high price Americans pay for drugs, during a wide-ranging speech at the White House on Monday. The president was flanked by Kennedy, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Marty Makary and National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya.

He did, however, threaten the companies with federal investigations into their practices and opening up the U.S. drug market to bring in more imported medications from other countries.

“The pharmaceutical companies make most of their profits from America,” Trump said. “That’s not a good thing.”

Trump played up the announcement over the weekend, boasting in one post that his plan could save “TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS."

But on Monday, the White House offered no specifics for how much money the administration anticipates it could save.

The health department's top leaders will be meeting with drug company executives over the next 30 days to offer new prices on drugs that are based off what other countries pay, Oz said on Monday.

Americans are unlikely to see relief on rising drug costs quickly because of the order, said Rachel Sachs, a health law expert at Washington University.

“It really does seem the plan is to ask manufacturers to voluntarily lower their prices to some point, which is not known,” Sachs said. “If they do not lower their prices to the desired point, HHS shall take other actions with a very long timeline, some of which could potentially, years in the future, lower drug prices.”

The health department has the most authority to change the prices of drugs covered by Medicare and Medicaid because it can set regulations. Even still, the agency's power to do so is limited. Congress just approved in 2022 a new law that allows Medicare to negotiate the price it pays for a handful of prescription drugs starting in 2026. Before the law, Medicare paid what the drug companies charged. Drug companies unsuccessfully sued over the implementation of the law.

The price that millions of Americans covered by private insurance pay for drugs is even harder for the agency to manipulate.

The U.S. routinely outspends other nations on drug prices, compared with other large and wealthy countries, a problem that has long drawn the ire of both major political parties, but a lasting fix has never cleared Congress.

Trump came into his first term accusing pharmaceutical companies of “getting away with murder” and complaining that other countries whose governments set drug prices were taking advantage of Americans.

Ahead of the announcement, Trump puffed up his rhetoric toward the industry again on social media, writing that the “Pharmaceutical/Drug Companies would say, for years, that it was Research and Development Costs, and that all of these costs were, and would be, for no reason whatsoever, borne by the ‘suckers’ of America, ALONE.”

Referring to drug companies’ powerful lobbying efforts, he said that campaign contributions “can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican Party.”

“We are going to do the right thing,” he wrote.

Several pharmaceutical companies gained ground in the stock market on Monday morning. Merck, a company that made $64.2 billion last year with the help of its cancer treatment Keytruda, jumped 3.9%. Pharma giant Pfizer, which notched $63.6 billion in revenue in 2024, rose 2.5% while Gilead Sciences rose 5.8%.

Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Washington and Damian Troise in New York contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump, with Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, left, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, holds an executive order related to drug prices, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, May 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order related to drug prices, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, May 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

President Donald Trump signs an executive order related to drug prices, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, May 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, May 9, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE- Bottles of medicine ride on a belt at a mail-in pharmacy warehouse in Florence, N.J., July 10, 2018. President Donald Trump’s plan to change the pricing model for some medications is facing fierce criticism from the pharmaceutical industry before he’s even signed an executive order he says will lower the costs of drugs. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

PHOENIX (AP) — Deja Foxx celebrated her April birthday in a way most 25-year-olds don’t. The extra candle meant she was now eligible to represent Arizona in Congress, and Foxx marked the occasion with a fundraiser.

She’s part of a wide-ranging group of young Democratic candidates, many running to replace older incumbents, who have grown restless waiting for their turn to lead their party back to power.

After a crushing 2024 election loss, they say the party desperately needs a rebranding — and young leaders should steer it.

In southern Arizona on Tuesday, Foxx is one of several Democrats hoping to step into a deep blue seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a longtime political power broker in Tucson. He had become one of the most senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill over two decades in Congress. Grijalva's daughter, Adelita, is one of the contenders, and three Republicans are vying in the GOP primary.

But the push for younger leaders won’t end there. In next year’s midterm elections, primary challengers have already begun to emerge in states like California and Indiana that will give Democratic voters choices between longtime lawmakers and younger candidates.

In Georgia, for example, 80-year-old Democratic Rep. David Scott’s decades-long legacy could end with a primary he’s expected to join. This has drawn challengers fed up with his refusal to step aside despite years of concern about his declining health and rare public appearances. The primary got crowded almost a year after former President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 election race amid similar scrutiny over his age.

Challenging well-connected candidates can be daunting, but progressive leaders say the moment calls for urgency.

“Passing of the torch implies the leaders are handing it off,” said Amanda Litman, head of a group called Run for Something that bolsters progressive young candidates. “What we’re seeing right now is, the new generation is taking the torch. They’re not waiting for it to be passed.”

Many Boomer and Gen Z candidates alike have largely abandoned the traditional playbook of spending millions on TV ads in favor of TikTok and social media. But it's a pivot that older political hands would recognize from an older playbook: meeting voters where they are.

Foxx, a digital strategist, led influencer strategy for Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign bid. On TikTok, she speaks to nearly 400,000 followers, saying she’d be the first woman of “our” generation elected to Congress. In 2022, Florida voters elected the generation’s first congressman — Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost. The Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, which Frost co-chairs, has endorsed Adelita Grijalva.

Foxx has leaned into popular Gen Z internet slang in branding her district tour “Crashout or Congress.”

“Does the news make you feel like you’re about to crash out? Be honest,” Foxx posted.

Foxx said her campaign turned a corner after a primary debate in late May, when some clips of her performance drew the eyes of millions and helped spark a fundraising boost.

If Scott seeks another term in his suburban Atlanta district, he'll face several candidates in the Democratic primary next May: microbiologist and state Rep. Jasmine Clark, 42; state Sen. Emanuel Jones, 66; and 33-year-old Everton Blair, former chair of the state’s largest school district. Scott's campaign did not respond to requests for an interview.

Clark racked up 7,000 TikTok followers after a popular influencer reposted her. She occasionally pops in with solutions to people’s problems on NextDoor and is sometimes recognized as a podcast host instead of a state representative. She says Republicans have done a better job at saturating social media with their messaging.

“Instead of looking at Republicans and wagging our fingers at them, we could take some lessons from them,” she said.

Voters have been crushed by high living costs, Clark said, but Republicans, not Democrats, have been the ones to tell people their pain is real — even though Democrats have better ideas for fixing things.

Blair agreed that Democrats have better policy prescriptions for addressing voters’ economic concerns, but he said too many longtime lawmakers have stifled the party’s ability to get that message across. He said President Donald Trump is fattening the wallets of billionaires but cheating low- and middle-income voters “out of the American dream.”

“We have an incumbent who is just not doing the job, and we need a better fighter,” Blair said. “The stakes are just too high.”

Young people have grown up in a political climate dominated by algorithms, said 21-year-old Akbar Ali, first vice chair of the Democratic Party in Gwinnett County, home to some of Scott's district. That gives them a built-in understanding of how information spreads today, he said, but doesn't replace on-the-ground outreach to voters of all ages.

He said Scott’s physical absence is palpable, both in the community and as a voice in Congress.

“A lot of people are upset on a national level because we can’t hit back with enough vigor.” he said.

Adelita Grijalva carries a household name in Tucson and is regarded as the frontrunner. To Foxx, Grijalva benefits from her “legacy” last name.

Grijalva, who has received several endorsements, including from Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, has pushed back. She said she brings her own credentials to the table. Her father was progressive and antiestablishment, and she said she is, too.

But Foxx, who benefited personally from some government programs the Trump administration has slashed or is looking to slash, said Democrats need to do more to reach new voters.

“We are bringing people into this party, into this democracy, who have felt left out — by and large young people and working-class folks,” Foxx said.

In New York City, 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani recently won the mayor's race with an upbeat campaign that leaned heavily on TikTok and emphasized finding new ways to make city life more affordable.

In an era where so many young people doubt they’ll ever be better off than their parents, they’re increasingly willing to ditch pragmatism for bold policy platforms, said David Hogg.

Hogg was removed from his leadership role with the Democratic National Committee, which said his election broke party rules. His decision not to run again followed his push to oust long-serving Democrats in safe congressional seats. He has not backed away from his vow to primary “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats with fresher faces.

People of all ages want a fighter who understands what’s at stake as Trump cuts Medicaid and other programs that millions of Americans rely on, Hogg said. That’s why his political action committee, Leaders We Deserve, endorsed Foxx.

Young voters were key to Democratic wins in recent years, but some swung to the right as Trump made gains in 2024. Hogg said he's looking for candidates to “win them back” by talking about how change happens.

Older candidates can do that too, he said, but for better or worse, young people aren’t yet “jaded” by politics.

“In this dark moment, we need people who can provide us a general sense of hope, as crazy that can feel sometimes,” Hogg said. “To believe that maybe things won’t be as screwed up as they are now forever.”

Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. She reported from Atlanta.

Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a rally at the Hotel & GamingTrades Council headquarters in New York, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Georgia congressional candidate and state Rep. Jasmine Clark is pictured in Lawrenceville, Ga., June 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Charlotte Kramon)

Georgia Congressional candidate Everton Blair, a Democrat, poses for a photo in Lilburn, Ga., on July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Charlotte Kramon)

FILE - Activist Deja Foxx participates in the Global Citizen NOW conference in New York, April 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)