With the in­dus­try on ten­ter­hooks on what the phar­ma-spe­cif­ic tar­iffs may look like, As­traZeneca and No­var­tis said Tues­day that their lo­cal pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty will be key in side­step­ping these levies.

“Our goal, as I men­tioned, is to have 100% of our prod­ucts pro­duced in the US for the US,” No­var­tis CEO Vas Narasimhan said dur­ing its first-quar­ter earn­ings call with the me­dia Tues­day. “And we do have a lit­tle bit of a low­er mix at the mo­ment, but that, again, is some­thing we be­lieve is man­age­able,” he added.

“Usu­al­ly tar­iffs have not been a good idea for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and that's why there have nev­er been any tar­iffs on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals,” No­var­tis CFO Har­ry Kirsch added. “We are hap­py that we and oth­er in­dus­try play­ers can pro­vide in­put to the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion as they try to fig­ure out what the best way for­ward is,” he said.

GSK said its de­cou­pling with Ha­le­on is a key rea­son why it views it­self as “well-po­si­tioned” in the face of po­ten­tial phar­ma-spe­cif­ic tar­iffs.

When the drug­mak­er went through its “de­merg­er” with the con­sumer health busi­ness in 2022, there were “very in­ten­tion­al, de­lib­er­ate choic­es to re­set” its sup­ply chain for “re­gion­al re­silience” as well as “dou­ble sourc­ing” to al­low for flex­i­bil­i­ty, CEO Em­ma Walm­s­ley said. It has “mit­i­ga­tion op­tions” that it could ex­e­cute across its man­u­fac­tur­ing net­works once phar­ma levies are in place, the UK com­pa­ny said in a state­ment.

“We're watch­ing it very care­ful­ly … we are well-pre­pared,” Walm­s­ley said dur­ing GSK’s first-quar­ter earn­ings call with the me­dia. Some drug de­vel­op­ers and CD­MOs have sim­i­lar­ly ex­pressed how their ear­li­er moves — which were made even be­fore the talk of tar­iffs emerged — would help them nav­i­gate sec­tor-spe­cif­ic levies re­gard­less of what these might look like.

Dai­ichi Sankyo has re­it­er­at­ed that its ear­li­er plans to ex­pand ADC man­u­fac­tur­ing in the US, in­clud­ing for its block­buster drug En­her­tu, will help al­le­vi­ate some pres­sure from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump's loom­ing phar­ma-spe­cif­ic tar­iffs.

The Japan­ese com­pa­ny had al­ready bud­get­ed $350 mil­lion to boost pro­duc­tion in the US months be­fore talks about tar­iffs start­ed, CEO Hi­royu­ki Okuza­wa said dur­ing its first-quar­ter earn­ings call Fri­day.

The bud­get in­cludes the on­go­ing ex­pan­sion of a pro­duc­tion site in New Al­bany, OH, in which a main part will be used for Dai­ichi’s ADC man­u­fac­tur­ing, a spokesper­son told End­points News. Con­struc­tion start­ed in April 2024 and is due to be op­er­a­tional by March 2028, adding around 900 jobs over the next three years, the spokesper­son added. The ex­pan­sion will al­so fea­ture a new lab­o­ra­to­ry and ware­house space. 

WuXi AppTec’s rev­enue rose for the first few months of 2025, sig­nal­ing that pres­sures from the pro­posed Biose­cure Act may be sub­sid­ing even as the threat of phar­ma tar­iffs re­mains.

The CD­MO pulled in 21% more rev­enue for the first three months of 2025, re­port­ing a rev­enue of 9.65 bil­lion yuan ($1.32 bil­lion), com­pared to the 7.63 bil­lion yuan ($1 bil­lion) re­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od last year.

WuXi AppTec's earn­ings pre­sen­ta­tion, re­leased Mon­day, marks a step for­ward for the com­pa­ny whose rev­enue slid last year due to head­winds from Biose­cure — a bill aim­ing to block US com­pa­nies from work­ing with Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ers like WuXi. But the draft leg­is­la­tion has lost mo­men­tum since it wasn’t in­clud­ed in the fi­nal "must-pass" de­fense pack­age at the end of 2024.

Mer­ck is shift­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing for its block­buster drug Keytru­da to a new $1 bil­lion fac­to­ry in Delaware, dou­bling down on its plans to move pro­duc­tion to the US to mit­i­gate the im­pact of po­ten­tial phar­ma tar­iffs.

“By pro­duc­ing Keytru­da in the US, as well as nu­mer­ous fu­ture bi­o­log­ic prod­ucts, we are reaf­firm­ing our com­mit­ment to a strong US foot­print that sup­ports the Pres­i­dent’s eco­nom­ic agen­da,” the com­pa­ny said Tues­day.

With the threat of phar­ma-spe­cif­ic tar­iffs on the hori­zon, drug­mak­ers are rush­ing to show they are mov­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing to the US. On Tues­day morn­ing, No­var­tis re­it­er­at­ed it wish­es to have 100% of all its drug pro­duc­tion in the US in the next five years, and As­traZeneca said it's look­ing to shift man­u­fac­tur­ing from Eu­rope in­to the US. Mer­ck said it plans to con­tin­ue re­lo­cat­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions to the US, in­clud­ing Keytru­da pro­duc­tion in 2026.