Under the three-year deal, AbbVie agreed to lower prices on certain Medicaid drugs and expand distribution through the TrumpRx direct-to-patient platform. In exchange, the company received exemptions from pharmaceutical import tariffs and future price controls, while committing to invest $100bn over the next decade in US-based research, development, and capital projects, with manufacturing explicitly included in that commitment.
Although AbbVie has not detailed how the $100bn will be allocated, the focus on domestic production aligns with the administration’s push to reshore pharmaceutical manufacturing and reduce reliance on foreign supply chains. The company’s recent $175m acquisition and modernisation of a device manufacturing facility in Tempe, Arizona, designed to support both current and next-generation immunology and neuroscience therapies, offers an early indication of how that investment may begin to materialise.
With around 29,000 US employees, AbbVie is expected to channel a significant portion of its new capital toward expanding biologics manufacturing capacity, upgrading production technologies, and enhancing supply-chain resilience. These investments reflect a wider industry trend in which manufacturing scale and reliability have become strategic assets rather than back-end operations, especially as complex biologics and combination products come to dominate pipelines.
From a policy standpoint, AbbVie’s agreement fits a broader pattern. Major pharmaceutical companies are accepting selective price concessions in return for longer-term certainty on tariffs and regulatory oversight. For AbbVie, exemptions from future pricing mandates and import tariffs provide added flexibility to expand domestic production and packaging operations while preserving resources for its pipeline development.
The deal also represents a major expansion of AbbVie’s previously announced US investment plans, surpassing the $10bn commitment disclosed last year. In this context, manufacturing is not simply a compliance measure; it is central to how AbbVie is positioning itself within the current policy landscape.
AbbVie’s agreement joins a growing list of “most-favored-nation” deals between the administration and major drugmakers, including Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech (Roche), Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis, and Sanofi. Each has agreed to targeted price reductions on select US medicines in exchange for tariff relief and greater policy predictability.
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Collectively, these agreements suggest that US drug pricing negotiations are no longer focused solely on list prices or rebates. Domestic manufacturing investment has become a key factor in shaping policy decisions.
