Gil Roth
President
Pharma & Biopharma Outsourcing Association 

After a Trump victory in the US Presidential election, now one year ago, things are starting to settle down. But the pharma industry and US healthcare sector have been thrown into a new and unpredictable environment, making it unclear what comes next for the CMO/CDMO industry.

First of all, what will the president’s “America First” agenda mean for the bio/pharma sector? Today’s supply chains are global and interconnected, so it is unclear what effects American protectionism would have. Will the new administration influence supply chains? Will it push manufacturing in-house, or will it move production to the US?

While it is not clear how the new protectionism ethos will change the industry, leadership in the US Congress has tried to push through legislation in support of the “America First” goals of the new administration. The Republican leaders of the House of Representatives recently floated the idea of a Border Adjustment Tax (BAT), but dropped it after pushback from business interests.

The BAT would effectively have removed taxes on US exports and added taxes on US imports. It is representative of how the new admi ...