President Donald Trump caused the room to break out in laughter Monday when he told the story of a friend complaining about the U.S. price of the “fat shot drug.”
He made the comment while announcing a new executive order requiring pharmaceutical companies to charge Americans the same price they charge in developed nations overseas.
Trump told reporters at the White House, “A friend of mine who’s a businessman — very, very, very top guy, most of you would have heard of him — a highly neurotic, brilliant businessman, seriously overweight, and he takes the fat shot drug.”
“And he called me up … he’s a rough guy, smart guy, very successful, very rich … ‘Mr. President, could I ask you a question? I’m in London, and I just paid for this damn fat drug I take,’” Trump continued.
“I said, ‘It’s not working,’” he joked.
The room cracked up in laughter at this point.
‘He said, ‘I just paid $88 and in New York I pay $1,300. What the hell is going on?’ He said, ‘So I checked, and it’s the same box made in the same plant by the same company. It’s the identical pill that I buy in New York. And here I’m paying $88 in London, and New York, I’m paying $1,300,’” Trump recounted.
“Now, this is a great businessman, so — but he’s not familiar with this crazy situation that we have. But he was stunned,” the president added.
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Trump went on to say that the pharmaceutical companies can’t justify the price difference other than they’ve been able to get away with forcing Americans to pay the lion’s share of the research and development costs.
“I brought it up with the drug companies, represented by somebody who’s very, very smart, good person too. And we argued about it for about a half-hour. And then finally, he just said, because they can’t justify it, he just said, ‘Look, you got me. You got me. I can no longer justify [the price difference],’” Trump said.
Finally the man conceded, “It’s research and development.”
Trump responded that other countries should pay for R&D costs, too.
“What’s been happening is we’ve been subsidizing other countries throughout the world,” he told reporters.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Fox Business on Monday morning that the federal government, which is the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals, will get them down to European levels.
America provides 74% of the pharmaceutical revenues in the world, yet we only have 4.2% of the world’s population. Today, that ends. pic.twitter.com/b7lsctUqhi
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) May 12, 2025
“Right now, we provide, America provides 75 percent of the pharmaceutical revenues in the world. And we only have 4.2 percent of the world’s population,” he added.
“Democratic and Republican politicians have been talking about it for years, ‘We’ve got to end these discrepancies. Nobody has had the courage to do it, because of the power of the pharmaceutical lobby on Capitol Hill,” Kennedy said.
RFK Jr. further shared that HHS has been meeting with people in the industry who have admitted that the practice of overcharging Americans should have ended a long time ago, and they’re ready to change.
So what is likely to happen is the price in the U.S. will go down significantly, while those in other countries will go up, and the two will meet somewhere between where they are now.
That means the free market will be working, based on the true forces of supply and demand, and not distorted by Americans being forced to subsidize drug costs so the rest of the world can pay less.
It’s another win for the return to common sense under the Trump administration.
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