Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies will have a grace pe­ri­od of at least a year to move their man­u­fac­tur­ing to the US be­fore fac­ing tar­iffs on their drugs.

The new de­tail dis­closed Tues­day by Trump came as he promised the tar­iffs on drug­mak­ers, which have been in de­vel­op­ment since ear­ly this year, would come "very soon." Trump has re­peat­ed­ly said over the last few months that the tar­iffs were com­ing short­ly.

A grace pe­ri­od would give com­pa­nies at least some time to shift man­u­fac­tur­ing — though it of­ten takes years to build and bring new drug plants on­line, far longer than Trump is propos­ing.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Ju­ly 4 signed in­to law his wide-rang­ing tax cuts and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion pack­age, in­clud­ing an ex­pan­sion of or­phan drug pro­tec­tions from Medicare ne­go­ti­a­tions, and near­ly $1 tril­lion in Med­ic­aid cuts that could up­end the op­er­a­tions of hos­pi­tals that pro­vide cheap­er drugs and care un­der the 340B fed­er­al pro­gram.

The or­phan drug pro­vi­sion is a sig­nif­i­cant win for the drug in­dus­try. Un­der the law, which is for­mal­ly called the One Big Beau­ti­ful Bill Act, any or­phan or rare dis­ease drugs, po­ten­tial­ly in­clud­ing block­busters with mul­ti­ple or­phan in­di­ca­tions, won't face Medicare price ne­go­ti­a­tions un­der the In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act.

Nei­ther of the first two rounds of drugs se­lect­ed for ne­go­ti­a­tion in­clud­ed or­phan drugs. But the phar­ma in­dus­try raised con­cerns that the way the IRA was writ­ten could lim­it the ex­clu­sion to on­ly drugs with one rare dis­ease in­di­ca­tion.

Su­san Monarez's nom­i­na­tion for CDC di­rec­tor cleared the Sen­ate health com­mit­tee on Wednes­day, putting her one step clos­er to lead­ing the agency af­ter an up­heaval of its vac­cine ad­vis­ers.

If con­firmed by the full cham­ber, Monarez will be tasked with over­see­ing a new­ly re­built Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Im­mu­niza­tion Prac­tices (ACIP) and help­ing to re­store pub­lic trust in the agency’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing. The Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Health, Ed­u­ca­tion, La­bor and Pen­sions vot­ed 12-11 in Monarez’s fa­vor.

Monarez “is com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing trans­paren­cy at the CDC and prop­er­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing health guid­ance to the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” Sen. Bill Cas­sidy (R-LA) said in a state­ment be­fore the vote.

FDA Com­mis­sion­er Mar­ty Makary pledged to "mean­ing­ful­ly re­duce" un­nec­es­sary an­i­mal test­ing that's cur­rent­ly used to bring new drugs to mar­ket and to test them in ear­ly de­vel­op­men­tal stages.

While Makary's pro­pos­al is light on specifics, a re­duc­tion of an­i­mal test­ing could low­er R&D costs, speed up drug de­vel­op­ment, and "po­ten­tial­ly even trans­late in­to low­er drug prices," Makary said at an FDA-NIH work­shop at the FDA's head­quar­ters on Mon­day.

"One of our biggest goals is to re­duce an­i­mal test­ing in a way that's mean­ing­ful and con­tin­ues to pro­tect against pub­lic safe­ty," he added.

Makary's FDA in April said an­i­mal test­ing re­quire­ments, which vary de­pend­ing on the type of drug in de­vel­op­ment, will be "re­duced, re­fined, or po­ten­tial­ly re­placed" via "a range of ap­proach­es, in­clud­ing AI-based com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­els of tox­i­c­i­ty and cell lines and organoid tox­i­c­i­ty test­ing in a lab­o­ra­to­ry set­ting."

Thou­sands of FDA staff de­par­tures since April have sparked con­cerns with­in the phar­ma in­dus­try that nov­el drug ap­proval dead­lines might slip.

But in the first six months of 2025, the ap­proval num­bers re­main gen­er­al­ly aligned with pre­vi­ous years, even as FDA of­fi­cials warn that the full ex­tent of the staff cuts has yet to be re­al­ized.

As of Ju­ly 2, the FDA has ap­proved 24 new drugs and bi­o­log­ics so far in 2025, com­pared with 36 nov­el prod­ucts ap­proved by CDER and CBER over the same time pe­ri­od in 2024, and 40 in 2023. Ap­proval num­bers may vary year-to-year, de­pend­ing on pre­vi­ous years' sub­mis­sions, and of­ten serve more as a sign of in­dus­try pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and FDA's work­load.