World News

goes looking for anything regarding a pharmaceutical breakdown

https://www.euronews.com/health/2025/04/30/eu-commission-slams-first-us-step-towards-pharmaceutical-tariffs

Washington sources around 80% of its active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from China, India, and the EU. In 2024, pharmaceuticals were the top US import from the EU, including $127 billion (€117 billion) worth of semaglutide, a key component in popular weight-loss medications.

Hmm. That's a lot. That single chemical was imported at three times the value of all motor vehicle imports.

goes looking

I think that Euronews must have that statistic wrong. Semaglutide is big, but not that big. And that doesn't mesh with the above bar chart I provided from the European Commission at all.

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/semaglutide-market-report

The global semaglutide market size was estimated at USD 28.43 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.47% from 2025 to 2035.

looks further

Oh, Euronews must have mixed up the value of the whole pharma import category with the specific chemical. Smooth, guys. CNBC looks like it has it correct:

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/13/trumps-tariffs-will-hit-these-european-union-products-hardest.html

The top U.S. import from the EU in 2024, by category and dollar value, was pharmaceutical products, according to data from the U.S. Trade Census analyzed by ImportGenius. Included in that $127 billion worth of EU imports was semaglutide, an ingredient used in the popular GLP-1 weight loss drugs from Novo Nordisk, Ozempic and Wegovy. The GLP-1 compound was the sixth-largest import from the EU to the U.S., at $15.6 billion.

I will say that, even so, a major price increase there seems like it'd be pretty rough for a lot of Trump voters. Like, semaglutide is something that you'd be given if you're obese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaglutide

Semaglutide is an anti-diabetic medication used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and an anti-obesity medication used for long-term weight management.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/health/ozempic-glp-1-survey-kff

1 in 8 adults in the US has taken Ozempic or another GLP-1 drug, KFF survey finds

https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/php/data-research/index.html

National Diabetes Statistics Report

Prevalence varied significantly by education level, which is an indicator of socioeconomic status. Specifically, 13.1% of adults with less than a high school education had diagnosed diabetes versus 9.1% of those with a high school education and 6.9% of those with more than a high school education (Appendix Table 3).

Trump's rise back in 2016 was strongly supported by low-education voters in the Republican primaries; I remember people talking about demographic analysis:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-overwhelmingly-leads-rivals-in-support-from-less-educated-americans

Trump overwhelmingly leads rivals in support from less educated Americans

And presently, that's also true for the Republican Party relative to the Democratic Party:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/14/politics/the-biggest-predictor-of-how-someone-will-vote

“The biggest single, best predictor of how someone’s going to vote in American politics now is education level. That is now the new fault line in American politics,” Sosnik told David Chalian on the “CNN Political Briefing” podcast.

Trump’s rise over the past three election cycles, Sosnik argued, “accelerated and completed this political realignment based on education that had been forming since the early ’70s, at the beginning of the decline in the middle class.”

As the US transitions to a 21st century economy, there’s a rift between the people who attain education – “that’s become the basic Democratic Party,” he said, comparing them with people who feel left behind, “that group of voters is now the modern Republican Party base.”

https://www.statista.com/statistics/234534/participation-in-us-public-assistance-programs-by-education-level/

So you simultaneously have:

• Low-education Americans having particularly supported Trump.

• Medicaid (government medical services subsidy for low-income Americans) being slashed by the GOP, which transfers medical costs off taxpayers and more-heavily onto poor people who suffer from medical conditions; low-education Americans greatly disproportionately depend on this subsidy.

• In theory, states could simply increase medical subisidy outside of Medicaid, but the fact that Medicaid provides federal funding causes fiscal transfers across states. Most of the states that pitch in to the federal budget are (wealthier) Democratic states. Aside from New Mexico, which is very Democratic and makes heavy use of Medicaid, most states that heavily use Medicaid are poorer Republican-voting states. West Virgina had the highest level of popular support for Trump in the last Presidential election, had every county get a majority vote for Trump, had the single county with the highest share of Trump support in the US...and the second-highest level of Medicaid dependence.

• Tariffs that effectively amount to a substantial consumption tax on medicine are

assuming these Trump EU tariffs go into force

being put into place. Medicine has a low price elasticity of demand

one is pretty much going to have to pay for that whether it's expensive or not

so I'd think that people who have to have medicine are going to likely have to pay such a tax. They can't easily just not get medicine.

• A major increase looks to be on a drug that is considerably-disproportionately needed by low-education Americans.

I have to say that this kind of adds to some observations that a number of high-profile Trump policies seem to be disproportionately financially bad for Trump supporters.

Started when I was noticing that the Trump administration seemed to be doing a lot of things that looked to be really negative for American agriculture. I'd intuitively expect a Republican trifecta to favor agriculture; rural states tend to vote Republican, and rural areas within states tend to vote Republican. But a lot of things, from crackdowns on illegal immigration (one of the most-economically-important areas for illegal immigrants is agricultural work that requires manual labor) to the likely impact of countertariffs (China has, in the past, targeted American soy farmers with countertariffs, and you normally want low barriers to trade if you're globally competitive, which American agriculture generally is) seem to have real negatives for agriculture. Oh, and cutting SNAP (food stamps, a federal subsidy for food for low-income Americans). It used to be that federal subsidy for agriculture mostly took the form of subsidizing crop insurance, but I understand that over the decades, it shifted to SNAP to help build political support; this combines a subsidy for the poor and a subsidy for agriculture, so one can use political support from both factions.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-commodity-policy/farm-bill-spending

Examples of Farm Act programs provided with mandatory funding include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as well as most commodity and conservation programs.

If you're an American farmer and are looking at a pie chart like that, you probably don't want to cut nutrition assistance...but that's exactly what's happening.

During the first Trump administration, the administration did send financial support to American farmers to help mitigate the damage from the trade war with China, and I was guessing that maybe that'd improve its popularity in the sense that Trump was sending very visible financial aid and the harm was indirect and harder to see, but the material I was able to find, including publications from generally-Republican farming regions, seemed to be pretty unenthusiastic about the prospect of trade wars.

I kind of feel like I'd like to see an economist who specializes in political economy kind of walk through this, because it's left me more-than-a-little-puzzled. I can believe Trump burning someone who voted for him and maybe doesn't have a great handle on the impact of his policies, but one would think that the Republican Congressional delegation would be expected to look out for constituent interests, and these don't seem to do this. And agricultural industry associations like the Farm Bureau have not been happy either, and they're going to have bean-counters who should know the relevant numbers and inputs taking a pretty close look at this:

https://www.fb.org/news-release/afbf-new-tariffs-will-impact-americas-farmers

American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall today expressed alarm about potential harm to farmers resulting from the order signed by President Trump imposing stiff tariffs on the United States’ top three agricultural markets by value. An economic emergency was declared to put duties of 25% on imports from Mexico and Canada, with limited exceptions, as well as 10% on all imports from China. Canada and Mexico both announced they would impose retaliatory measures.

“Farm Bureau members support the goals of security and ensuring fair trade with our North American neighbors and China, but, unfortunately, we know from experience that farmers and rural communities will bear the brunt of retaliation. Harmful effects of retaliation to farmers ripple through the rest of the rural economy.

“In addition, over 80% of the United States’ supply of a key fertilizer ingredient — potash — comes from Canada. Tariffs that increase fertilizer prices threaten to deliver another blow to the finances of farm families already grappling with inflation and high supply costs.