Trump Calls on Big Pharma Execs to Bring Manufacturing Back to U.S.

January 31, 2017

President Donald Trump continued to focus on jobs and deregulation Tuesday. During a meeting with pharmaceutical executives Tuesday morning, Trump called on them — as the cameras rolled — to boost U.S. production and lower prices.

“We have to get lower prices, we have to get even better innovation, and I want you to move your companies back to the United States. I want you to manufacture in the United States,” Trump said. “You have to get your companies back here, we have to make products back here.”

Among those who attended the meeting were top executives at Merck & Co Inc, Johnson & Johnson, Celgene Corp, Eli Lilly & Co, Amgen Inc and Switzerland’s Novartis AG as well as the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America lobbying group.

As everyone was going around the table introducing themselves and their company, Joe Jimenez, chief executive of the Swiss pharma giant, Novartis, said that his company employed about 20,000 people in the U.S. Trump then asked him if he planned to expand in the U.S.

Jimenez said that tax reform would be a “massive help,” to which Trump replied, “We’ll get it.”

At one point, Amgen Chief Executive Officer Robert Bradway was heard promising to add 1,600 U.S. jobs at his California-based biotechnology company.

Trump’s call for more drug production in the U.S., saying that a lot of countries have moved out of the country for various reasons, is interesting considering that, “According to the Department of Commerce, most pharmaceuticals consumed in the U.S. are made here; only about a quarter of drugs are imported, or about $86 billion in 2015. The top five sources of imports are Ireland, German, Switzerland, Israel and India. The industry also exported $47 billion in pharmaceutical products in 2015,” as reported by The Washington Post.

Ways Trump wants to help companies bring jobs back and lower prices include decreasing regulations that have been “driving up costs and slowing innovation,” implementing a stronger trade policy that prioritizes “foreign countries pay their fair share for a U.S.-manufactured drug, so our drug companies have greater financial resources to accelerate the development of new cures,” and increasing competition by opposing anything that makes it harder for smaller, younger drug companies to get their medications to the market.

Not surprisingly, talk of tax reform, stronger trade policies and deregulation were attractive to executives.

“Tax, deregulation — those are things that could really help us expand operations,” Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said during the meeting.

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.