At least four bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies have bro­ken ground over the past four weeks, af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said drug­mak­ers would be ex­empt from his 100% tar­iff threat if they have done so.

Last month, Trump said in a Truth So­cial post that phar­ma com­pa­nies build­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing sites in the US would face no tar­iffs. He de­fined "build­ing" as "break­ing ground" or "un­der con­struc­tion." Yet, con­fu­sion re­mains over those terms, Mol­lie Sitkows­ki, a trade com­pli­ance part­ner at US law firm Fae­gre Drinker told End­points News.

There’s lit­tle de­tail on what con­sti­tutes break­ing ground and whether a drug­mak­er would be ex­empt from tar­iffs glob­al­ly or on­ly at the fa­cil­i­ty un­der con­struc­tion, she said.

Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic and Dana­her say their tool and equip­ment busi­ness­es will prof­it as drug­mak­ers con­tin­ue to on­shore their man­u­fac­tur­ing to the US un­der the threat of tar­iffs.

Ear­li­er this year, an­a­lysts warned that tool and pack­ag­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers, like Dana­her, could be hit hard by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s tar­iffs. But as drug­mak­ers break ground on new fa­cil­i­ties to stave off a po­ten­tial phar­ma-spe­cif­ic levy, their need for new equip­ment will in­crease.

“It'll ben­e­fit our bio pro­duc­tion busi­ness and an­a­lyt­i­cal in­stru­ments. Busi­ness­es will all ben­e­fit from those new con­struc­tions,” Ther­mo Fish­er CEO Marc Casper said dur­ing the com­pa­ny’s 2025 third-quar­ter earn­ings call on Wednes­day.

Yet, both Dana­her and Ther­mo Fish­er not­ed equip­ment or­ders will take time to im­pact their rev­enues. It takes a cou­ple of years to build a new fa­cil­i­ty or ex­pand an ex­ist­ing one, so it “takes some time to ges­tate,” Casper said.

Icon said it is con­tin­u­ing to face project can­cel­la­tions as cus­tomers are de­creas­ing their ear­ly re­search spend­ing. As for Med­pace, the com­pa­ny said the worst might be over.

Icon on Wednes­day said it is still fac­ing chal­lenges with cus­tomers can­cel­ing projects or de­lay­ing their de­ci­sion-mak­ing. At the be­gin­ning of the year, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump made sweep­ing NIH fund­ing cuts, caus­ing com­pa­nies to pull back on R&D spend­ing with CROs.

The CRO lost $900 mil­lion due to project can­cel­la­tions in Q3, in line with the $909 mil­lion lost in Q2, but more than $659 mil­lion in Q1.

Com­pa­nies tend­ed to can­cel projects with CROs that ei­ther hadn’t start­ed en­roll­ment and had been giv­en be­fore Q3, Icon CEO Bar­ry Balfe said dur­ing its earn­ings call, ac­cord­ing to an Al­phaSense tran­script. Balfe added he ex­pects can­cel­la­tions to con­tin­ue this year, but projects could pick up again over the course of 2026.

Mer­ck KGaA is end­ing its API pro­duc­tion work in Ark­low, Ire­land, and is propos­ing to shut down its fac­to­ry at the end of 2028, a com­pa­ny spokesper­son told End­points News.

The com­pa­ny made the de­ci­sion af­ter a “strate­gic port­fo­lio re­view” found “de­clin­ing vol­umes and low prof­itabil­i­ty,” the spokesper­son said.

The Ark­low site man­u­fac­tures com­mer­cial and late-stage APIs and ad­vanced in­ter­me­di­ates, in­clud­ing the start­ing ma­te­ri­als for an­ti­de­pres­sants, an­ti­his­t­a­mines and an­ti-fun­gal treat­ments, ac­cord­ing to a com­pa­ny fact sheet.

Mer­ck is con­sid­er­ing a pro­pos­al to cease op­er­a­tions "af­ter a thor­ough eval­u­a­tion and re­view of mul­ti­ple al­ter­nate op­tions and in align­ment with our busi­ness strat­e­gy,” the spokesper­son added. The pro­pos­al is sub­ject to a 30-day con­sul­ta­tion with em­ploy­ees which will be­gin right away.

Pri­vate jets be­long­ing to six of the largest US drug­mak­ers land­ed at Wash­ing­ton, DC-area air­ports at least 127 times through Sep­tem­ber, ac­cord­ing to an End­points News analy­sis, dur­ing one of the high­est-stakes po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions for the in­dus­try in decades.

That adds up to a pri­vate plane from one of the com­pa­nies land­ing in Wash­ing­ton al­most every oth­er day. The trips come at a time of near-con­stant lob­by­ing and ne­go­ti­a­tion by the in­dus­try over drug prices, trade, sci­ence, the FDA and many oth­er is­sues.

To con­duct the analy­sis, End­points re­viewed pri­vate jet flight da­ta from a com­pa­ny called Jet­Spy, which tracks plane po­si­tion da­ta “from a va­ri­ety of sources.” The analy­sis looked at pri­vate jets op­er­at­ed by Ab­b­Vie, John­son & John­son, Pfiz­er, Mer­ck, Gilead and Eli Lil­ly, a sam­pling of the largest drug­mak­ers in the world that had da­ta avail­able on Jet­Spy.

In Glas­gow, Scot­land, Lee Cronin is bet­ting his start­up can make mol­e­cules bet­ter than the low-cost com­pe­ti­tion in In­dia and Chi­na.

Chemi­fy has just raised $50 mil­lion in a Se­ries B to scale up what he calls its “chem­put­er” sys­tem, a mix of ro­bot­ics and AI built atop his own pro­gram­ming lan­guage for chem­istry. The round was co-led by Wing Ven­ture Cap­i­tal and In­sight Part­ners.

And while many biotechs are us­ing AI mod­els to dis­cov­er or de­sign new drugs, Chemi­fy is fo­cused on the next prob­lem: man­u­fac­tur­ing those mol­e­cules in the re­al world.