President Donald Trump highlighted weight-loss drug costs as evidence that his administration has dramatically lowered prescription drug prices. Trump claimed the so-called “F-A-T drug” — referring to popular weight-loss medications — dropped from around $1,300 to roughly $125–$140 under his watch.
He argued this proves the U.S. is now paying prices similar to those in Europe, adding that Democrats’ affordability messaging is a “con job.”
Trump also tied the pharmaceutical changes to his wider economic agenda, saying rising government revenue could eventually eliminate income tax altogether.
00:00Under my executive order to lower prescription drug prices, which I think is the single biggest
00:06thing we've ever done that nobody writes about because you're fake news. I've made unprecedented
00:13deals along with Bobby and Oz and all of the people that work on it. A lot of people, a lot
00:20of people that you wouldn't even think work on it, but they do to slash drug prices by 200 percent,
00:27300 percent, 400 percent, 500 percent, 600 percent, 700 percent, 800 percent. Nobody's ever heard of it before because I instituted favored nations and no nation agreed to do it. And then I said to the nations, if you're not going to do it, I'm going to charge you 100 percent tariff, which is more money than we're talking about. And they said, sir, we'd love to do it. Please. We would be honored to do it. And they agreed that
00:56they would go along with the whole thing. Nobody, nobody thought you could do it because they, they felt number one, you couldn't get the drug companies to do it. So we're paying as an example for the, let's call it the fat drug, the fat drug, FAT for fat people.
01:13Anybody use it at the table, don't ask. But the fat drug was $135. Think of that for certain people, $1,300 for certain countries, $1,300 in New York. So in New York, it was $1,300. And in London, it was $135. And a friend of mine called me, he said, what is this? Why is it?
01:41He got used to paying $1,300. Well, now what we have it down to is, Bobby, what's the number? Like 150 or something. We have it down to a low number, don't we?
01:51Yeah, it's $1,300. Think of that. So we got it down from $1,300 to $125 to $140, depending on various countries.
02:04In other words, we're paying the lowest price tied for the lowest price in the world.
02:09But as people said, you could never do that because you couldn't get the countries to agree to it.
02:15I did. Every country agreed to it. Because I said, if you're not going to agree to it, that's okay.
02:19I'm going to charge you tariffs. And as soon as they said that, they said, we agree.
02:23And then we had to be a little tough with the drug companies, but they came along.
02:27The bigger problem was the countries. The countries just wouldn't go along with it.
02:30But they did. Every country. So we have reduced drug prices by 500, 600, 700, 800, 900 percent,
02:41depending on the drug, depending on the company, depending on all of the different factors involved.
02:48Nobody's ever even thought of drug reductions like that, price reductions.
02:52And I told you the story that, in my first term, I was so proud of myself because I reduced drugs.
02:58It was the first time in 28 years that drug prices were reduced.
03:02It was one quarter of 1 percent. One quarter of 1 percent.
03:05And I was so proud of myself. I said, it was the first time in 28 years that drug prices went down
03:12over the course of a year, over the course of a presidency.
03:16One year. One quarter of 1 percent. I had a news conference. I was so proud.
03:20But now I got them down, not one quarter of 1 percent. I got them down 400, 500, 600 percent and more.
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