During an international conference in Davos, Switzerland, President Donald Trump sat down with the leaders of several European life science companies to encourage more investment in the United States.
During an international conference in Davos, Switzerland, President Donald Trump sat down with the leaders of several European life science companies to encourage more investment in the United States.
Among those at the dinner were Vas Narasimhan, the incoming chief executive officer of Novartis and Bayer CEO Werner Baumann, STAT News reported. Also in attendance was Nestle CEO Mark Schneider and representatives from Siemens. Both companies have a strong toehold in life sciences. Other non-life science companies were also in attendance, including Deloitte, Volvo, and HSBC, STAT said.
Trump is expected to address the conference and tout the tax cuts that were recently approved by Congress. Those are expected to spur investments particularly with a lowering of the corporate tax rate in the United States.
Since his election in November of 2016, Trump has had something of a mixed relationship with the pharma and biotech industries. Sticking with a populist message that helped get him elected, Trump decried the pricing of drugs and claimed the companies were “getting away with murder.” While Trump has signaled interest in finding a way to lower the price of drugs, particularly those paid for through federally-funded programs, he has not initiated any policies to address that, STAT noted.
At a rally in March 2017 shortly after his inauguration, Trump said the “cost of medicine in this country is outrageous” and pointed to cheaper drug prices in many European countries. He then went on to say that the reason drug prices in the United States are so high is due to campaign contributions made by pharmaceutical companies to powerful political interests.
What was discussed at the Thursday dinner has not yet fully been reported. The New York Times said Trump complimented the business leaders as “some of the greatest business leaders in the world.” CNBC noted in a brief that at the beginning of the dinner the guests introduced themselves and provided a description of their respective companies. Many of the guests complimented the passage of the recent tax cut, CNBC added.
Last year, Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez, who hands over the company reins to Narasimhan in a few days, said passage of the tax cuts could propel the company to invest in the United States. When the company looks to invest in a new manufacturing site, Jimenez said the company has to think about the tax rate and the economy of that country they’re investing in.
“When we build a new manufacturing site we think about the tax rate, we think about the economy of the country, we think about jobs, so a booming U.S. economy would make the U.S. more attractive for investment,” Jimenez said at the time.
Last year chief executive officers from more than 16 large manufacturing companies, including pharma leaders from Celgene, Dow Chemical, Eli Lilly, Merck and Pfizer, penned a letter to Congressional leaders in support of the tax reform plan. By implementing the reforms, the CEOs said the plan would result in higher wages and “roughly 1.7 million new jobs here at home.”
