Earlier this week, TACD member and researcher for Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program Megan Whiteman spoke at the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)’s Section 301 Investigation hearing on “Acts, Policies, and Practices of Germany Related to Persistent Underpayment for Innovative Pharmaceutical Products.” The hearing is part of the formal process by which the USTR may eventually recommend tariffs on German goods to offset the supposed under-spending on pharmaceuticals.

Whiteman was one of only nine experts to testify at the hearing, and the only one to state affirmatively: Research finds no association between R&D costs and prices, debunking the Trump administration’s core argument. A key pillar of the Trump administration’s approach to drug pricing in the U.S. is to push the ‘freerider claim’: that drug prices in the U.S. are so disproportionately high because the U.S. subsidizes other countries’ medicines, and that raising prices abroad will help  lower prices in the United States. Decades of research prove this claim to be false.

Specifically on the question of Germany’s drug pricing policies, Whiteman made the case that Germany’s drug pricing policies are not unreasonable, but rather are justified by the need to manage healthcare costs – something that governments have the responsibility to do in order to protect the public and steward taxpayer resources.

Whiteman continued on to argue that the price differences between the U.S. and Germany are not evidence of price suppression, but the inverse. Insulated from competition by patents and largely free from regulation to provide a check on monopoly pricing, the  pharmaceutical industry prices drugs in the U.S. based on what the market will bear. It’s only in recent years that Medicare gained authority to negotiate prices with drugmakers at all, providing a necessary counterbalance to the market power of the industry. Notably, the U.S. negotiation policy represents a framework more similar to those used in other countries, including Germany.

Whiteman also noted in her testimony that treating high prices or private sector revenues as synonymous with innovation fails to account for the substantial public-sector contributions to innovation.

Public Citizen’s testimony concluded with the same conclusion drawn in formal comments submitted to the investigation by the TACD at large, TACD member Health Action International, and U.S. Senator Sanders and Representative Doggett: There should be no action taken under Section 301 against Germany, and this investigation should be dropped immediately.

This hearing is coming just as Politico reports that Germany is exploring a potential drug pricing proposal to avoid the threat of tariffs from the Trump administration, and the Trump administration is pushing for a deal similar to the U.S.-UK deal struck in December 2025. To avoid Trump’s tariffs on pharmaceutical and medical technology exports, the UK deal committed to increase NHS spending on new U.S. medicines. But research published in the interim confirms what TACD warned from the beginning: increased spending without additional funding will “create substantial opportunity cost elsewhere, having a direct effect on population health.” Said research finds that the deal could result in  229,000 excess deaths in the UK – 92,000 more than during the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and June 2022. You read that right: the U.S.-UK pharma deal  could be deadlier for Britons than Covid.

As TACD warned back in February, prescription drug corporations have been raising prices on both sides of the Atlantic for years, adding cost burdens for patients and public health systems. With national health budgets already stretched thin by the steep costs of new medicines, corporate pressure to alter drug pricing regulations in Europe will only worsen the burden for all patients