We all know how Donald Trump is probably the best dealmaker in the world. While he honed his dealmaking skills in business, he’s been able to leverage and scale those skills in a global way. He has applied them to everything from defusing World War III to boosting the American economy through out-of-the-box thinking on tariffs, the supply chain, and interest rates, and that just scratches the surface. When it comes to negotiating, he’s a master, and you cannot underestimate the number of lives he’s already saved just by avoiding unnecessary wars and conflicts in all the years he’s spent behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.
If I were the Nobel Prize committee, I would give him the Peace Prize just for that.
So it was that on Tuesday, President Trump held an Oval Office event, surrounded by Cabinet members and senior members of his administration. The CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, joined them.
The purpose of the event was to announce a new drug pricing deal Trump brokered with Pfizer. Since Pfizer is one of the biggest members of Big Pharma, it makes a lot of drugs that people count on. Negotiating a deal with this company to deliver better drug prices for Americans is a huge win for Trump, and he deserves all of the credit and accolades he can get for the accomplishment. Clearly, this is something he promised to do and had to do.
Under their agreement, Pfizer will voluntarily reduce U.S. drug prices, and in return, the company will get a three-year exemption from tariffs levied against pharmaceuticals. Tied to this, Pfizer had to commit to invest in domestic manufacturing. On Tuesday, the company said it would invest $70 billion into new manufacturing and research projects in the United States.
This is all good and important news, and it’s one of many reasons the majority of Americans who voted for Trump did so in 2024.
On Tuesday, Trump told the press gaggle that he’s also talking to a slew of other major pharmaceutical companies on similar types of deals. These may include Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, AbbVie, Roche, Novo Nordisk, and Amgen. It’s probably not a coincidence that these firms recently announced their own plans for investing in manufacturing or research on U.S. soil.
The good news on drug prices kept on coming. Pfizer promised ‘most-favored-nation’ pricing to Medicaid, reducing the cost burden for some of society’s most vulnerable. And Medicare patients will see similar benefits.
In my line of work, over the years, we’ve often had to make decisions on whether to announce news by press release or statement or to have a media event. When you avoid the event, you control more of the variables. By simply issuing a news release, you control what the media gets, and more importantly, you control what it doesn’t get. It helps to keep the announcement more focused and on message. In short, it’s lower risk.
An event is always higher risk. More can go wrong, and optics can be an issue. A facial expression, an off-the-cuff comment, or just something that’s ad-libbed can lead to unintended consequences.
But if you’ve ever seen Donald Trump in action, you know written press statements aren’t for him. With Trump, it’s, “Go big or go home.” So on Tuesday, Trump went big. In doing so, he praised Bourla and personally thanked him for the company’s contributions to the COVID-19 pandemic response, and of course, stepping up to reduce drug prices.
“I was honored to have Albert be the first. He’s done a fantastic job, as you know with the Covid. He did a fantastic job with a lot of things. He’s a leader, and Pfizer is right at the top.”
Anyone who has watched Trump closely knows this is what he does. After what were likely some very difficult and trying negotiations, he rewards his former opponent with the sort of charm offensive that only Trump can deliver. That’s what happened. Coming out of the White House photo op, the sound bites and optics likely made the PR department and investors at Pfizer very happy.
On paper and without context, this is a good news event. In PR terms, it should be about as low risk as it gets. So why is it then that the X platform had no small amount of MAGA and MAHA supporters sending shade to their favorite president?
Because most people who voted for Trump and quite a few who would have taken a bullet for the man in Butler on that hot July afternoon in 2024 do not see Big Pharma the way Trump does. Yes, they still have Trump's back, but they also have long and deep memories.
For them, the pandemic wasn’t just political, and it wasn’t just about health. It did encompass both and much, much more. By the time the vaccines came along, what little leverage they may have had was ripped away from them. They didn’t even have the option to negotiate.
Many Trump supporters lost their jobs for not getting vaccinated. They lost social standing, professional standing, and family relationships were irreversibly destroyed over the vaccine. Many suffered adverse health effects. The term “suddenly and unexpectedly” took on a dark new meaning. They were censored and banned from social media for just giving an opinion or telling the truth. They were bullied, intimidated, gaslighted, and pressured into taking the vaccine, and many did so against their will just to stay employed. What’s worse, they knew the forces at play and behind all of it. Resentment doesn’t begin to describe it.
They saw and felt how a massive campaign was deployed to incentivize the entire public health system to prescribe the shot, and to disincentivize (being nice here) the prescription of alternative options and treatments.
In the end, we all learned that the shots didn’t stop the spread, and they weren’t as “safe and effective” as billed. Americans still feel betrayed by the public health system, their government, and, of course, Big Pharma.
Big Pharma is the one sector that came out ahead after the COVID pandemic. Those companies raked in billions of dollars, and the government protected them from litigation in the event the vaccine could be proven to cause harm.
All of this added up to the reaction of Trump’s base when they saw him let bygones be bygones in the name of striking a deal with Pfizer. This sort of praise coming from the right is something they still are not ready for and perhaps may never be ready. The costs for so many were just too high.
Mr. President, please strike that deal and do all the things you are able to do in your negotiations with Pfizer. We do support that. But do not pretend these are the good guys, and don’t expect us to believe it when you say it. One of the things we respect most about you is that you’re usually brutally honest. Don’t give that part of you away just to make a deal. We have too much respect for you to believe that.
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