The Trump administration has been discussing severe restrictions on medicines from China that, if enacted, could upend the American pharmaceutical industry and availability of everything from generic drugs to cutting-edge treatments.

At the heart of the possible clampdown is a drafted executive order that threatens to cut off the pipeline of Chinese-invented experimental treatments.

Major pharmaceutical companies have been buying the rights to drugs created in China for cancer, obesity, heart disease and Crohn’s disease.

The prospect of the order, a draft of which was obtained by The New York Times, has set off furious behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts by two diametrically opposed groups – each with billions of dollars at stake.

Prominent investors and corporate executives with close ties to the White House, including tech billionaire Peter Thiel, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the Koch family and staff at the investment firm run by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, have argued for a decisive crackdown against what they view as an existential threat by China to US biotechnology, according to four people briefed on their lobbying who asked for anonymity to discuss private conversations.

These investors have money at risk because they hold hard-to-sell investments in fledgling American companies that have been struggling to keep up with

China’s surging biotech sector

.

On the other side are the world’s largest drugmakers, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca. In the past few years, they have been on a shopping spree in China for low-priced experimental drugs, spurning smaller American biotech companies that are developing similar medicines.

Democrats and Republicans have called the United States’ reliance on China for medicines a national security vulnerability.

In 2020 and 2025 , Mr Trump issued a series of executive orders calling for more US drug manufacturing. And he has been threatening for months to

impose tariffs on medicines

imported from China and other countries as part of the administration’s broader protectionist push.

A White House spokesperson, Mr Kush Desai, said in a statement on Sept 8 that the administration was not “actively considering” the draft executive order.

“Safeguarding our national and economic security is a top priority for the administration,” Mr Desai said.

But as recently as last week, administration officials were soliciting feedback from US biotech investors, including exchanging versions of the draft executive order, according to three of the people involved in the discussions.

Aides to Mr Stephen Miller, Mr Trump’s deputy chief of staff, have been involved in a back-and-forth with the investors for several months, those people said.

The moves would mark Mr Trump’s first targeting of the critical pipeline of experimental drugs from China, which drug companies are betting on for future profits in the US market.

For American patients, the proposed crackdown could reduce or even eliminate the availability of promising treatments invented in China.

But China’s critics warn that action is needed, because American patients could also be denied new cures if China’s rise cripples the US biotech industry.

The fear is, because Chinese companies can move more quickly and cheaply, investors will sour on American startups, making it too hard for them to raise money and develop drugs.

People who want more drug manufacturing moved to the United States say it will help safeguard American patients against supply shortages, which have grown common, especially if a future pandemic prompts China to curtail exports.

A draft of the executive order sent to billionaire backers and big-name pharmaceutical companies says China “and other hostile actors have exploited gaps in our open scientific and regulatory systems”.

The draft order calls for boosting US production of several types of medicines that are believed to have substantial production in China, including antibiotics and the pain reliever acetaminophen, or generic Tylenol, a dynamic that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick flagged during a CNBC interview on Sept 12 .

The order proposes that once American production of these drugs ramps up, the government should give preference to those products in its purchasing.

The order also proposes offering tax credits to companies that move their manufacturing to the United States.

Historically, many US biotech startups have generated revenue by selling the rights to promising experimental drugs to the largest pharma companies.

But in the past few years, major drugmakers hunting for potential medicines have increasingly turned to Chinese biotech companies instead.

In the first half of 2025 , 38 per cent of such major deals involved a drug from China, up from next to nothing last decade, according to DealForma, which tracks drug industry transactions.

American pharmaceutical giants like Merck, Regeneron and AbbVie, as well as multinational drugmakers like AstraZeneca, Roche and Sanofi, have recently scooped up experimental drugs from China.

“The large companies are really benefiting,” said Mr Brad Loncar, a former biotech investor who now runs BiotechTV, a media company. “They’re getting great deals, and they’re not going to want that to end.”

Few have been louder about it than Pfizer. The company’s CEO, Mr Albert Bourla, has cultivated close ties to Mr Trump, going so far as to proclaim last week that

the president deserved a Nobel Prize

for his championing of the Covid-19 vaccine.

This summer, Mr Bourla told Dr Mehmet Oz, the Medicare and Medicaid administrator who has been central to the Trump administration’s internal debate over the issue, that the dealmaking in China benefitted not just his company but US patients, according to a person to whom Oz relayed the discussion.

Pfizer declined to comment.

In one interview this spring, Mr Bourla warned against policies that would impede China, saying, “You don’t want them to stop in treating cancer.”

In March, Mr Bourla traveled to Beijing, where he was part of a group of American executives who met with China’s second-highest official, Premier Li Qiang.

Two months later, Pfizer bought the rights to an experimental cancer drug from a Chinese drugmaker, 3SBio, in a deal worth up to US$6 billion (S$7.7 billion), the largest transaction of its kind.

In his conversations with lawmakers and Trump officials, Mr Bourla characterised the deal as an example of taking something valuable from China, he told financial analysts i n August .

“There is only so much you can do to slow down China,” he said. NYTIMES

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