How AstraZeneca won US meds deal

CEO's strategy helps company avoid tariffs

- MAGGIE FICK

President Trump announces the deal to lower US drug prices, with AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot (fourth from left), Virginia Gov Glenn Youngkin (third from left), and other officials, in Washington on Friday.

(REUTERS)

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot looked relaxed standing in the Oval Office on Friday as US President Donald Trump unveiled a medicine deal that will lower drug prices for millions of Americans.

The hard work had paid off, allowing Mr Soriot to clinch the first agreement for a non-US drugmaker and shield his Anglo-Swedish company from threatened steep tariffs on imports to the US, the world's largest pharmaceuticals market.

That moment at the White House was the culmination of public and private meetings between Mr Soriot and Trump officials, stretching back to November last year when Trump won election, three sources close to the negotiations told Reuters. And it went down to the wire with a lastminute push from AstraZeneca to seal the agreement.

"You've kept me up at night and my team as well. But it's been really worth it," Mr Soriot joked to Trump.

The agreement will likely bolster the 66-year-old French-born Australian's reputation as something of a Trump whisperer, even as many CEOs globally grapple with the president's whipsaw tariff changes.

Trump argues Americans pay far too much — often three times more, studies show — for prescription medicines than in other wealthy nations and set a Sept 29 deadline for drugmakers to cut prices, using threats of tariffs up to 100% as leverage.