AstraZeneca said on Tuesday that it was moving the production of some medicines destined for the US market from Europe to the United States, as a precaution against the possible imposition of tariffs on pharmaceutical imports. The announcement accompanied the drugmaker’s first-quarter results, which showed revenues up 13 per cent to $15.6 billion and pre-tax profit rising 21 per cent to $3.4 billion.
Chief executive Pascal Soriot reassured investors that most of the group’s US prescriptions are already made domestically across eleven sites, and that only a minority of its American sales still rely on European production. “Mitigations are already under way with manufacturing of those products being shifted to the US,” he said, adding that the change will not affect operations in the UK.
AstraZeneca has dual-sourcing arrangements for the vast majority of its portfolio, giving it the flexibility to reallocate capacity between Europe, the US and China as needed. The current blanket US tariffs on goods imported from China, Mexico and Canada cover pharmaceuticals, but Soriot noted the group “does not import from those countries to the US, and hardly ships any medicines manufactured in the US to China.”
In November, AstraZeneca announced a $3.5 billion investment in US manufacturing and research including cell and gene therapy facilities and last month unveiled a $2.5 billion expansion in Beijing. Switzerland’s Roche and Novartis have similarly ramped up US commitments in recent weeks.
Soriot used the earnings call to urge European governments to increase spending on innovative drugs, warning that “all these jobs, whether they are manufacturing or R&D, are going to move to the US over time, and new investments, new jobs are going to be created in the US.” He proposed a Europe-wide list price for medicines with discounts adjusted to each country’s purchasing power pointing out that the UK spends just 7 per cent of its healthcare budget on new medicines, compared with 10–11 per cent elsewhere in Europe and 13–15 per cent in the US.
The CEO lamented that the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has so far declined to recommend AstraZeneca’s new breast cancer drug Enhertu for routine NHS use in England and Wales on cost grounds, despite its availability in Scotland and other European markets. “Companies will follow where they feel welcome,” Soriot said, “because access to our medicines is good, innovation is rewarded. And of course, tax policies also play a role.”
Looking ahead, the drugmaker reiterated its pipeline and sales targets for 2025, noting that its strong first-quarter performance driven by cancer and biopharma products gives it confidence to meet full-year guidance even under a higher-tariff scenario. “If tariffs were imposed in the range announced against other industries, we have built up inventories and can still achieve our targets,” Soriot concluded.
