How weight-loss drugs blew out the U.S. trade deficit

Planes have been jetting from Ireland to the U.S. this year carrying something more valuable than gold: $36 billion worth of hormones for popular obesity and diabetes drugs.

- Chelsey Dulaney & Jared S. Hopkins

The frantic airlift of those ingredients more than double what was imported from Ireland for all of last year reflects the collision of two powerful forces: tariff-driven stockpiling and weight-loss drug demand.

The peptide and protein-based hormones feed into a category of drugs that include wildly popular GLP-1 treatments and newer types of insulin known as analogues. Taken together, the shipments weighed just 23,400 pounds, according to U.S. trade data, equivalent to the weight of less than four Tesla Cybertrucks.

Fit into temperature-controlled air cargo containers, the pharmaceutical ingredients have had a huge impact on the U.S. trade imbalance. The shipments have vaulted Ireland, a country of only 5.4 million people, into the second-largest goods trade imbalance with the U.S., trailing only China. They accounted for roughly half of the $71 billion in goods the U.S. imported from the country in the first four months of the year.

Nearly 100% of the imports had a final destination of Indiana, according to U.S. customs records. Eli Lilly, the drug giant behind weight loss and diabetes drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro, is headquartered in Indianapolis.

A Lilly spokeswoman declined to comment.

President Trump's off-and-on trade war has rewritten global trading patterns this year and—temporarily, at least—widened some of the imbalances he is seeking to eliminate.

Companies have scrambled to get shipments to the U.S. ahead of tariff deadlines, with a first round of front-loading ahead of the April 2 announcement, and smaller pushes after the White House paused some of its tariffs.

Ireland is at the epicenter of the global rush. It is a major hub for U.S. drug giants, who have been expanding operations there in part because of Ireland's favorable tax policies.