The Tariff Turmoil UpsideMore International Partnerships

If there's anything good to come from the tariff turmoil, it is that countries have rediscovered the importance of collaboration, international partnerships and market diversification to drive innovation. It's a point I heard repeatedly at the BIO Asia-Taiwan conference in Taipei last month (July 23 - 27, 2025). In the upended global trade order, where foe is friend and everyone else gets tariffed, it's hardly surprising we're looking to a broader suite of markets to provide some resilience and certainty to our life science innovation endeavours.

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Stuart Dignam, CEO, MTPConnect, Australia

That said, the United States, with its 'Liberation Day' tariff regime that is at the heart of the turmoil, remains by far the biggest market in the world for both therapeutics and medical devices. The prospect of arbitrary tariffs being imposed on exports, and a pharmaceuticals-specific tariff of up to 200 per cent, have been mooted for some time with a clear objective of encouraging companies to move production to the US.

"When they hear that (about tariffs), they will leave China, they will leave other places because... most of their product is sold here and they're going to be opening up their plants all over the place," is how President Trump puts it.

Market size and tariff-driven economic forces work to incentivise Australian biotech innovators to move their operations to the US to better access that market. The same forces are compelling international firms like Roche, Novartis and AstraZeneca to commit billions in US-based manufacturing, and US companies like Eli Lily to re-shore manufacturing from other parts of the world.

Even Australia's larger biotech companies are touting the depth of their US-based manufacturing as evidence of their ability to ride out the tariff turmoil.

In this environment of uncertainty and perverse incentives, strategies for backing life science innovation and supporting startups and SMEs through the difficult early years are more critical than ever.