Latest news with #pricecontrols
Bloomberg
02-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Amazon Hit by German Warning Over Price Controls on Marketplace
Inc. was warned by Germany's antitrust watchdog that price controls for retailers on its marketplace are likely to violate national and European Union laws. The Federal Cartel Office said it told Amazon that — in its preliminary assessment — the company's policing of how much retailers charge runs contrary to regulations for the digital economy and fair competition.
Wall Street Journal
18-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Donald Trump Plays Walmart CEO
Which American politician said the following? Item one: 'Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should . . . EAT THE TARIFFS, and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I'll be watching, and so will your customers!!!' Item two: 'After causing catastrophic inflation, Comrade Kamala announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls . . . Her plan is very dangerous because it may sound good politically . . . This is Communist; this is Marxist; this is fascist.' If you guessed that both are statements by Donald Trump, you have broken the code on the bizarro world of the President's second-term economic policies. Last year he blasted Kamala Harris's proposal for price controls on groceries. But now he is attacking Walmart for warning that it will have to raises prices in the wake of Mr. Trump's tariffs. Mr. Trump's flip-flop on price controls is a rebuttal of his own previous tariff claims. For months he's said that foreign producers pay the full cost of tariffs. But now he's admitting that Walmart, an American retailer, will have to eat some of the costs or pass them on to Americans. Despite his business background, Mr. Trump doesn't know much about retail. Walmart's net profit margin is below 3%, so it doesn't have much room to absorb the higher costs caused by tariffs. Retail competition is intense, and Walmart's longtime comparative advantage has been lower prices. Mr. President is telling a company how to run its business, along with a vague, implicit threat of retribution. Marxist? How would Mr. Trump react if Congress told him how much his family could charge for a Mar-a-Lago fee? Mr. Trump is trying to duck the political fallout for his misguided tariff policy by blaming everyone else. Americans are too smart to fall for it.
National Post
14-05-2025
- Business
- National Post
J.D. Tuccille: Trump channels inner socialist with Soviet-style price controls
Article content In 2010, Obama administration health-care advisers Nancy-Ann DeParle, Ezekiel Emanuel and Robert Kocher boasted about the Affordable Care Act in a letter published by the Annals of Internal Medicine: 'The economic forces put in motion by the act are likely to lead to vertical organization of providers and accelerate physician employment by hospitals and aggregation into larger physician groups.' Article content Trump is embracing that same top-down approach, with medicine — in this case, the pharmaceutical industry — remaining nominally private, but subject to government command. Article content As the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon, who literally wrote the book on reforming U.S. health care from a free-market perspective, points out, 'Trump's executive order is an attempt to impose government price controls on pharmaceuticals.' Cannon recommended regulatory reforms to get the government out of the health-care market. 'Price controls are never the answer,' he added. Article content A major problem with price controls is that government can dictate a price, but it can't guarantee that anybody will produce and sell sufficient quantities of a good at that price. It also can't eliminate the consequences of putting a ceiling on prices and lowering incentives for developing new drugs. Article content Article content West Virginia University economics professor Chris Freiman elaborated on this point, arguing that, 'Drug price controls are a classic example of what is seen versus what is unseen.' What consumers will see, he noted, is cheaper drugs. But what they will never see is 'the drugs we would otherwise have benefited from but aren't created in the first place' because pharmaceutical companies fear price caps will reduce or eliminate the return on their investments. Article content Republicans rightly criticized then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris when she proposed combating the inflation caused by wild spending during the Biden-Harris administration (and Trump's first term) by fixing prices. She promised to 'bring down prices' by taking on 'big corporations that engage in illegal price gouging and corporate landlords that unfairly raise rents on working families.' Besides rent, she had a particular fixation on dictating grocery prices. Article content Even the Washington Post's Democrat-friendly editorial board called Harris out, saying, 'Thankfully, this gambit by Ms. Harris has been met with almost instant skepticism, with many critics citing President Richard M. Nixon's failed price controls from the 1970s.' Article content Unfortunately, Trump doesn't just share his predecessors' taste for price controls, he also emulates the Biden administration's appetite for government-directed industrial policy, with politicians planning economic development and picking winners and losers. Trump told reporters earlier this month about the supply choking effects of his tariff policies, saying, 'A 10-year-old girl, nine-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl, doesn't need 37 dolls.… She could be very happy with two or three or four or five.' Article content His comments echoed socialist Vermont senator and former Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders' 2015 dismissal of 'a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers' in a free economy as unnecessary when he saw what he considered greater goals to pursue. Article content Interestingly, Trump's secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said during the announcement of the drug price plan, 'I have a couple of kids who are Democrats or big Bernie Sanders fans, and when I told them that this was going to happen, they had tears in their eyes.' Article content When a Republican president and his Democrat and socialist opponents agree more than they disagree about their desire for a planned economy, it's obvious that our political choices are as severely constrained as they would make our selection of dolls and deodorants. Americans may overwhelmingly reject central planning, but our major politicians are all socialists now. Article content Article content Article content
Wall Street Journal
12-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Price Controls Won't Make America Healthy
President Trump signed an executive order Monday establishing a 'most-favored nation' policy, which will effectively impose price controls on certain pharmaceutical products covered by Medicaid and Medicare. This policy emulates the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act, which forces pharmaceutical companies to negotiate with the federal government on the prices of medications covered by Medicare—with the government holding all the leverage. Such policies are a reaction to Americans outraged over paying higher prices for pharmaceutical products—including American-made ones—than European countries, most of which impose price controls. As Mr. Trump said last week, the U.S. is being 'ripped off compared to the rest of the world.'
The Independent
12-05-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Trump says friend in UK on ‘the fat shot drug' inspired plan for price controls and tariff threats to lower prescription costs
President Donald Trump on Monday said his administration's new plan to impose price controls on prescription medications was inspired by hearing from a friend about the low cost of weight loss medication in the United Kingdom compared to what the same person paid for the same medication in America. Trump used the bizarre anecdote as he was explaining the genesis of the executive order he signed just before leaving the White House for a trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. It purports to impose what he described as a 'most-favored nation ' policy on pharmaceutical prices by insisting that manufacturers charge Americans the same price as the lowest-paying developed countries, all of which have single-payer health systems that can use their market power to negotiate prices directly with drug makers. He told reporters of a taking a call from a 'friend' who he described as a 'highly neurotic, brilliant businessman' and 'seriously overweight' about the cost of what Trump called 'the fat shot drug.' 'I'm in London, and I just paid for this damn fat drug I take. I said, it's not working. They said, he said, I just paid $88 and in New York I paid $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, in New York, I'm paying $1,300,' Trump recounted to the assembled journalists in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Continuing, Trump said he later confronted a pharmaceutical company representative about the discrepancy and complained that the companies had been 'justifying this crap for years' based on research and development costs for new medications. 'Well ... other countries should pay research and development, too. It's for their benefit ... so for the first time in many years, we'll slash the cost of prescription drugs, and we will bring fairness to America,' he said, adding that his plan would cause prices to drop by as much as 80 percent for medications. He also announced that he's ordering Commerce and USTR to 'begin investigations into foreign nations that extort drug companies by blocking their products unless they accept bottom line and very low dollar amounts for their product, unfairly shifting the cost burden onto American patients.' He threatened to cut off American imports of non-pharmaceutical products from foreign nations unless those governments agree to pay higher prices for medications purchased by their single-payer health services, citing European Union countries such as Germany as an example. 'The biggest thing we're going to do is we're going to tell those countries, like those represented by the European Union, that, you know, that game is up. Sorry. And if they want to get cute, then they don't have to sell cars into the United States anymore,' he said. A White House official who briefed reporters on the order Trump signed said it directs the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to 'take all appropriate action against unreasonable and discriminatory policies in foreign countries that suppress drug prices abroad' and orders the Department of Health and Human Services to 'facilitate ... direct-to-consumer sales' of prescription drugs at 'most-favored nation prices' that will be set based on targets established by the Health and Human Services secretary within 30 days. 'This will open round of negotiation between the Health and Human Services and industry, and if adequate progress is not made towards these price reduction targets, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will impose most favored nation pricing via rulemaking,' the official said.. It was not immediately clear what legal authority was being cited to justify imposing price controls on medications, and White House officials who were pressed on the matter during the briefing early Monday did not specify the authorities being invoked beyond vague 'national security' concerns.
