Trump waves tariffs: AstraZeneca migrates to the USA

Faced with Donald Trump's threat of tariffs on the pharmaceutical sector, British giant AstraZeneca has announced it will invest $50 billion in the United States by 2030 to manufacture drugs and fund its research programs.

This investment "reinforces our confidence in American innovation (...) and our commitment to the millions of patients who need our medicines in America and around the world," AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said in a statement released Monday night. "It's an honor," President Donald Trump said. "$50 billion is a significant investment. (...) So thank you, AstraZeneca," he added.

The US president said in early July that he was considering a 200% surcharge on pharmaceutical products. He specified that he would wait at least a year to implement it, to give companies time to build factories on American soil.

The British laboratory, which announced in April that it would begin transferring part of its European production to the United States, is not the first to line up a massive investment in the country, the world's largest pharmaceutical market, to show its credentials. In the spring, groups such as Roche, Novartis, and Sanofi announced more than $200 billion in additional cumulative investments in the United States.

AstraZeneca announced Tuesday a new plant in Virginia that will be "AstraZeneca's largest global investment in drug manufacturing." Overall, the company estimates it will create tens of thousands of new direct and indirect jobs in the country, its largest market, where it operates 19 sites and already employs more than 18,000 people.

Tuesday's announcement comes on top of $3.5 billion in investments in the country announced last year. These sums "will contribute to AstraZeneca's ambition to reach $80 billion in revenue by 2030," 50% of which will be generated in the United States, according to the company. But these billions of dollars invested risk raising eyebrows in the United Kingdom, where the group is based and where the January announcement that it was abandoning a £450 million vaccine factory project, blaming a lack of government support, was seen as a blow.

But as AstraZeneca strengthens its presence across the Atlantic, "investors are likely to pressure it to move its primary listing to the United States," the analyst adds. This possibility has already been considered by its boss, The Times reported in early July. A stock market exit would be a shock for the British financial center, which is seeking to revive its attractiveness since Brexit, especially since the group is one of the companies with the highest market capitalization in the FTSE 100, the main index of the London Stock Exchange.

AstraZeneca, which reported a 34% increase in net profit to $2.92 billion in the first quarter, generated more than 40% of its revenue in the United States during this period.