The US In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Com­mis­sion is open­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Chi­na's sup­port for biotech as well as the coun­try's pric­ing prac­tices, look­ing at whether the gov­ern­ment there "ma­nip­u­lat­ed mar­kets and dis­ad­van­taged Amer­i­can biotech­nol­o­gy firms."

The trade com­mis­sion's role is most­ly ad­vi­so­ry, but the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was man­dat­ed by Con­gress in a re­cent spend­ing bill, and could be a pre­lude to ac­tion by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion that could lead to re­stric­tions on deal­mak­ing or oth­er pol­i­cy mea­sures meant to slow Chi­na's in­dus­try.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion comes as the US has faced an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive Chi­nese biotech sec­tor, with a surge in li­cens­ing deals by US and Eu­ro­pean bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies to ac­quire as­sets from Chi­nese biotechs, of­ten at a low­er cost than could be paid to West­ern biotechs.

At least two big phar­ma com­pa­nies have said they will par­tic­i­pate in the up­com­ing third round of Medicare ne­go­ti­a­tions un­der the In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act, as court chal­lenges against the pro­gram per­sist.

No­var­tis con­firmed to End­points News this week that it will ne­go­ti­ate prices for its drugs Kisqali and Cosen­tyx, while Take­da said it will do the same for En­tyvio in the Japan­ese com­pa­ny's first for­ay in­to the IRA talks. UCB and Ei­sai al­so sug­gest­ed in state­ments that they in­tend to work with CMS.

Oth­er com­pa­nies that were asked to par­tic­i­pate in the talks ei­ther de­clined to com­ment to End­points or did­n't re­spond to re­quests by pub­li­ca­tion time. The dead­line to opt in to ne­go­ti­a­tions is Sat­ur­day, ac­cord­ing to CMS guid­ance.

Mer­ck is shed­ding more than 150 jobs in North Car­oli­na, al­most all of which are tied to a vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing plant that was un­veiled less than a year ago.

The head­count re­duc­tions were dis­closed in a state work­force fil­ing this week, show­ing 147 cuts at the Durham fa­cil­i­ty and an­oth­er sev­en lay­offs at a near­by satel­lite of­fice.

“We con­tin­u­ous­ly as­sess our op­er­a­tions and evolv­ing busi­ness needs and ad­just as need­ed to en­sure the ef­fec­tive­ness of our man­u­fac­tur­ing net­work in de­liv­er­ing re­li­able, com­pli­ant sup­ply of our med­i­cines and vac­cines,” a com­pa­ny spokesper­son told End­points News on Fri­day.

Mer­ck opened the $1 bil­lion plant in March 2025 to boost pro­duc­tion of its HPV vac­cine Gar­dasil, a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar mon­ey­mak­er that nonethe­less has seen a sig­nif­i­cant slump in the last year. De­mand in Chi­na has nose­dived amid a na­tion­wide health­care-re­lat­ed probe that’s chilled im­mu­niza­tion ef­forts.