Business

Trump’s Tariff Threat for Drug imports Poses Big Political Risks

Published

6 months ago

April 15, 2025

Trump’s Tariff Threat for Drug imports Poses Big Political Risks

President Trump’s decision to move a step closer to imposing tariffs on imported medicines poses considerable political risk, because Americans could face higher prices and more shortages of critical drugs.

The Trump administration filed a federal notice on Monday saying that it had begun an investigation into whether imports of medicines and pharmaceutical ingredients threaten America’s national security, an effort to lay the groundwork for possible tariffs on foreign-made drugs.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he planned to impose such levies, to shift overseas production of medicines back to the United States. Experts said that tariffs were unlikely to achieve that goal: Moving manufacturing would be hugely expensive and would take years.

It was not clear how long the investigation would last or when the planned tariffs might go into effect. Mr. Trump started the inquiry under a legal authority known as Section 232 that he has used for other industries like cars and lumber.

Mr. Trump said in remarks to reporters on Monday that pharmaceutical tariffs would come in the “not too distant future.”

“We don’t make our own drugs anymore,” Mr. Trump said. “The drug companies are in Ireland, and they’re in lots of other places, China.”

While some drugs are made at least in part in the United States, America’s reliance on China for medicines has generated alarm for years, with both Republicans and Democrats identifying it as a national security vulnerability.

Many drugs are not produced without at least one stage of the manufacturing process happening in China. Even India’s giant generic drug sector is deeply dependent on China, because Indian manufacturers typically obtain their raw materials from Chinese plants.

Imposing disruptive levies on lifesaving medications creates risks for Mr. Trump that were not a major concern with some of his other tariff targets, like steel and aluminum, where Americans generally aren’t directly exposed to increased prices.

He could face a harsh backlash if pharmaceutical tariffs lead to significant drug price increases or shortages for patients. The number of drug shortages reached a record-level high last year. Americans fill several billion prescriptions a year, on top of purchasing over-the-counter products like cough syrup and Tylenol.

Mr. Trump has not talked much about lowering drug prices in his second term, nor did he make it a top issue in his 2024 campaign.

If pharmaceutical tariffs cause an increase in any drug prices, Democrats could jump on the issue for the midterm elections next year and try to undercut Mr. Trump’s popularity among working-class voters.

Democrats have already seized on the issue. In a letter sent to Trump officials last week, a group of lawmakers led by Representatives Doris Matsui of California and Brad Schneider of Illinois wrote that “reckless tariffs” on medicines threatened to harm Americans.

“The supply disruptions of critical medical products will unavoidably hurt U.S. patients, force providers to make impossible rationing decisions, and potentially even result in death as treatments are delayed, or more effective medicines and products are swapped for less effective alternatives,” they wrote.

Kush Desai, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement on Monday that “President Trump has long been clear about the importance of reshoring manufacturing that is critical to our country’s national and economic security.”

Targeting pharmaceuticals also risks further inflaming relations with allies like the European Union and India, whose economies are supported by drug exports to the United States. Officials of those countries fear that drug tariffs could prompt companies to renege on investments, resulting in a loss of jobs, factories and tax revenue.

Along with cars and electronics, pharmaceuticals are one of the categories of goods that the United States imports the most, measured by value.

Tariffs on drugs would add tens of billions of dollars of import costs for a powerful industry that relies on a complex global supply chain. Production of most medications consumed in the United States happens in more than one part of the world, with plants in different countries handling different stages of the process.

Expensive patented medications, like the popular weight-loss drug Wegovy, are more likely to be made in Europe or the United States.

China and India do most of the production of cheaper generic drugs, which account for the vast majority of U.S. prescriptions. For example, plants in those countries make nearly all of the world’s supply of the active ingredients in the painkiller ibuprofen and the antibiotic ciprofloxacin, according to Clarivate, an industry data provider.

Pharmaceuticals are the latest sector that Mr. Trump has targeted. Tariffs of 25 percent are already in effect for imported steel, aluminum and cars. The Trump administration has also initiated Section 232 investigations, or inquiries into national security concerns, for copper, lumber and computer chips.

Investigations under the 232 provision must be completed within nine months.

The drug industry has been lobbying the Trump administration to phase in tariffs gradually or to exempt certain types of products, such as medications at risk of shortages or those deemed essential, like antibiotics.

John Murphy III, the head of a trade group that represents manufacturers of generic drugs, said in a statement on Monday that tariffs “will only amplify the problems that already exist in the U.S. market for affordable medicines.”

The tariffs would be paid by drug companies importing products or ingredients into the United States. Many of those manufacturers would most likely try to pass at least some of the added costs to employers and government programs like Medicare and Medicaid that cover most of the tab for Americans’ prescription drugs. That would ultimately affect patients.

Levies could cause shortages of some cheaper generic drugs, because prices are so close to production costs. Manufacturers with such thin margins may be forced to curtail or end production.

Industry experts said they were not concerned about shortages for brand-name drugs, which generally have high profit margins that could absorb tariffs.

Patients whose insurance requires them to pay a deductible or a percentage of a drug’s price could eventually face higher out-of-pocket costs for some drugs. They may also have to pay a higher co-payment if shortages resulting from the tariffs force them to switch to a different, pricier medication. In future years, people could face higher health insurance premiums.

In some cases, contractual agreements and steep financial penalties may discourage manufacturers from sharply raising prices. With patented products, manufacturers typically have such large margins that their sales would still be highly profitable even if they absorbed the cost of tariffs.

David Ricks, the chief executive of Eli Lilly, told the BBC earlier this month that his company expected to eat the cost of tariffs. But Lilly could reduce its research spending or cut staffing as a result, he said.

Mr. Trump has been saying that his tariffs will prompt drugmakers to move their overseas production back to the United States. In recent weeks, several of the industry’s richest companies — Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and Novartis — announced plans to spend billions of dollars to build new plants in the United States.

But experts say the tariffs aren’t nearly enough to bring most drug production back to the United States. The obstacles are especially steep with crucial generic drugs. Building a new plant takes years. Even shifting production to an existing American plant may be too costly. Labor and other production expenses are much higher in the United States.

Joaquin Duato, chief executive of Johnson & Johnson, said on a call with analysts on Tuesday that “if what you want is to build manufacturing capacity in the U.S., both in med-tech and in pharmaceuticals, the most effective answer is not tariffs, but tax policy.”

The Trump administration has been taking aim at Ireland, where nearly all of the largest American drugmakers have a manufacturing presence, in some cases dating back decades. One of Ireland’s biggest appeals for the industry is the tax advantages it offers. Some drugmakers shift their profits there to lower their overall tax bills.

Last month, Mr. Trump said that Ireland “took our pharmaceutical companies away.” Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said that Ireland was running a “tax scam” that American pharmaceutical companies were exploiting. “That’s got to end,” Mr. Lutnick said.

Some of the industry’s biggest blockbusters, including the cancer drug Keytruda and the anti-wrinkle injection Botox, are partly produced in Ireland. The United States imports more pharmaceutical products, as measured by their value, from Ireland than any other country.

Irish officials fear that tariffs could prompt drugmakers to pull back from investments in the country. But experts said that drugmakers may be reluctant to undergo the costly, disruptive process of uprooting their operations there, especially while uncertainty persists about how long Mr. Trump’s tariffs will last.

Pharmaceuticals have historically been spared from tariffs under a World Trade Organization agreement meant to ensure that patients have access to vital medications.

Medications were mostly exempted from the round of global tariffs Mr. Trump announced earlier this month and then partly delayed for 90 days. Drugmakers importing from China into the United States have been subject to tariffs, initially 10 percent and later 20 percent, that Mr. Trump had imposed on Chinese imports earlier this year.

Ana Swanson contributed reporting.

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Business

Sora app’s hyperreal AI videos ignite online trust crisis as downloads surge

Published

15 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Press Room

Sora app’s hyperreal AI videos ignite online trust crisis as downloads surge

Scrolling through the Sora app can feel a bit like entering a real-life multiverse.

Michael Jackson performs standup; the alien from the “Predator” movies flips burgers at McDonald’s; a home security camera captures a moose crashing through the glass door; Queen Elizabeth dives from the top of a table at a pub.

Such improbable realities, fantastical futures, and absurdist videos are the mainstay of the Sora app, a new short video app released by ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

The continuous stream of hyperreal, short-form videos made by artificial intelligence is mind-bending and mesmerizing at first. But it quickly triggers a new need to second-guess every piece of content as real or fake.

“The biggest risk with Sora is that it makes plausible deniability impossible to overcome, and that it erodes confidence in our ability to discern authentic from synthetic,” said Sam Gregory, an expert on deepfakes and executive director at WITNESS, a human rights organization. “Individual fakes matter, but the real damage is a fog of doubt settling over everything we see,”

All videos on the Sora app are entirely AI-generated, and there is no option to share real footage. But from the first week of its launch, users were sharing their Sora videos across all types of social media.

Less than a week after its launch Sept. 30, the Sora app crossed a million downloads, outpacing the initial growth of ChatGPT. Sora also reached the top of the App Store in the U.S. For now, the Sora app is available only to iOS users in the United States, and people cannot access it unless they have an invitation code.

To use the app, people have to scan their faces and read out three numbers displayed on screen for the system to capture a voice signature. Once that’s done, users can type a custom text prompt and create hyperreal 10-second videos complete with background sound and dialogue.

Through a feature called “Cameos,” users can superimpose their face or a friend’s face into any existing video. Though all outputs carry a visible watermark, numerous websites now offer watermark removal for Sora videos.

At launch, OpenAI took a lax approach to enforcing copyright restrictions and allowed the re-creation of copyrighted material by default, unless the owners opted out.

Users began generating AI video featuring characters from such titles as “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “South Park,” and “Breaking Bad,” and videos styled after the game show “The Price Is Right,” and the ‘90s sitcom “Friends.”

Then came the re-creation of dead celebrities, including Tupac Shakur roaming the streets in Cuba, Hitler facing off with Michael Jackson, and remixes of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his iconic “I Have A Dream” speech — but calling for freeing the disgraced rapper Diddy.

“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” Zelda Williams, daughter of late comedian Robin Williams, posted on Instagram. “You’re not making art, you’re making disgusting, over-processed hot dogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else’s throat, hoping they’ll give you a little thumbs up and like it. Gross.”

Other dead celebrity re-creations, including Kobe Bryant, Stephen Hawking and President Kennedy, created on Sora have been cross-posted on social media websites, garnering millions of views.

Christina Gorski, director of communications at Fred Rogers Productions, said that Rogers’ family was “frustrated by the AI videos misrepresenting Mister Rogers being circulated online.”

Videos of Mr. Rogers holding a gun, greeting rapper Tupac, and other satirical fake situations have been shared widely on Sora.

“The videos are in direct contradiction to the careful intentionality and adherence to core child development principles that Fred Rogers brought to every episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. We have contacted OpenAI to request that the voice and likeness of Mister Rogers be blocked for use on the Sora platform, and we would expect them and other AI platforms to respect personal identities in the future,” Gorski said in a statement to The Times.

Hollywood talent agencies and unions, including SAG-AFTRA, have started to accuse OpenAI of improper use of likenesses. The central tension boils down to control over the use of the likenesses of actors and licensed characters — and fair compensation for use in AI videos.

In the aftermath of Hollywood’s concerns over copyright, Sam Altman shared a blog post, promising greater control for rights-holders to specify how their characters can be used in AI videos — and is exploring ways to share revenue with rights-holders.

He also said that studios could now “opt-in” for their characters to be used in AI re-creations, a reversal from OpenAI’s original stance of an opt-out regime.

The future, according to Altman, is heading toward creating personalized content for an audience of a few — or an audience of one.

“Creativity could be about to go through a Cambrian explosion, and along with it, the quality of art and entertainment can drastically increase,” Altman wrote, calling this genre of engagement “interactive fan fiction.”

The estates of dead actors, however, are racing to protect their likeness in the age of AI.

CMG Worldwide, which represents the estates of deceased celebrities, struck a partnership with deepfake detection company Loti AI to protect CMG’s rosters of actors and estates from unauthorized digital use.

Loti AI will constantly monitor for AI impersonations of 20 personalities represented by CMG, including Burt Reynolds, Christopher Reeve, Mark Twain and Rosa Parks.

“Since the launch of Sora 2, for example, our signups have increased roughly 30x as people search for ways to regain control over their digital likeness,” said Luke Arrigoni, co-founder and CEO of Loti AI.

Since January, Loti AI said it has removed thousands of instances of unauthorized content as new AI tools made it easier than ever to create and spread deepfakes.

After numerous “disrespectful depictions” of Martin Luther King Jr., OpenAI said it was pausing the generation of videos in the civil rights icon’s image on Sora, at the request of King’s estate. While there are strong free-speech interests in depicting historical figures, public figures and their families should ultimately have control over how their likeness is used, OpenAI said in a post.

Now, authorized representatives or estate owners can request that their likenesses not be used in Sora cameos.

As legal pressure mounts, Sora has become more strict about when it will allow the re-creation of copyrighted characters. It increasingly puts up content policy violations notices.

Now, creating Disney characters or other images triggers a content policy violation warning. Users who aren’t fans of the restrictions have started creating video memes about the content policy violation warnings.

There’s a growing virality to what has been dubbed “AI slop.”

Last week featured ring camera footage of a grandmother chasing a crocodile at the door, and a series of “fat olympics” videos where obese people participate in athletic events such as pole vault, swimming and track events.

Dedicated slop factories have turned the engagement into a money spinner, generating a constant stream of videos that are hard to look away from. One pithy tech commentator dubbed it “Cocomelon for adults.”

Even with increasing protections for celebrity likenesses, critics warn that the casual “likeness appropriation” of any common person or situation could lead to public confusion, enhance misinformation and erode public trust.

Meanwhile, even as the technology is being used by bad actors and even some governments for propaganda and promotion of certain political views, people in power can hide behind the flood of fake news by claiming that even real proof was generated by AI, said Gregory of WITNESS.

“I’m concerned about the ability to fabricate protest footage, stage false atrocities, or insert real people with words placed in their mouths into compromising scenarios,” he said.

Business

After ‘Megalopolis’ flops, Francis Ford Coppola puts his pricey watch collection up for auction

Published

2 days ago

October 24, 2025

Press Room

After ‘Megalopolis’ flops, Francis Ford Coppola puts his pricey watch collection up for auction

Francis Ford Coppola wants an offer he can’t refuse — on his timepieces.

The Academy Award-winning director is selling seven watches from his personal collection, including his custom F.P. Journe FFC Prototype, estimated to sell for more than $1 million, according to a statement from Phillips, the New York City-based auction house. Phillips will hold the auction on Dec. 6 and 7.

The sale could help stanch losses from last year’s box-office flop “Megalopolis,” which cost over $120 million to make and was largely financed by the 86-year-old director. The movie grossed only $14.3 million worldwide.

The film, Coppola’s first since his 2011 horror movie “Twixt,” premiered at Cannes last year to largely negative reviews. The Times’ Joshua Rothkopf called it a “wildly ambitious, overstuffed city epic.”

At a news conference at Cannes, Coppola discussed the tremendous amount of his own money that he had sunk into the film, saying that he “never cared about money” and that his children “don’t need a fortune.”

Among the Coppola timepieces also going under the hammer are examples from Patek Philippe, Blancpain and IWC.

But the headlining piece is the F.P. Journe FFC Prototype that features a black titanium, human-like hand that resembles a steampunk gauntlet that articulates the hours when the fingers extend or retract.

Francis Ford Coppola’s custom F.P. Journe FFC timepiece uses a single hand to indicate all 12 hours.

(Phillips)

The watch was a collaboration between Coppola and master watchmaker François-Paul Journe that began following a conversation the pair had during a visit he made to the filmmaker’s Inglenook winery in Napa Valley in 2012.

Coppola asked Journe if a human hand had ever been used to mark time. That question sparked a years-long conversation during which the watchmaker grappled with how to indicate the 12 hours of the dial using just five fingers.

Journe found his inspiration in Ambroise Paré, a 16th century French barber surgeon and an innovator of prosthetic limbs in particular, including Le Petit Lorrain, a prosthetic hand made of iron and leather that featured hidden gears and springs enabling the fingers to move, not dissimilar to a watch mechanism.

“Speaking with Francis in 2012 and hearing his idea on the use of a human hand to indicate time inspired me to create a watch I never could have imagined myself. The challenge was formidable — exactly the type of watchmaking project I adore,” said Journe in a statement.

Journe eventually created six prototypes and delivered Coppola’s watch to him in 2021.

“I’m proud to fully support the sale of this watch through Phillips to fund the creation of his artistic masterpieces in filmmaking,” he said.

Coppola first became interested in the watchmaker when he gifted his wife Eleanor an F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance in platinum with a white gold dial for Christmas in 2009, prompting the director to extend an invitation to Journe to visit him at his Napa winery.

Eleanor Coppola, a documentary filmmaker and writer, died in 2024 after 61 years of marriage. Her F.P. Journe timepiece is also part of the auction and is estimated to fetch between $120,000 to $240,000.

Business

Disney warns that ESPN, ABC and other channels could go dark on YouTube TV

Published

3 days ago

October 24, 2025

Press Room

Disney warns that ESPN, ABC and other channels could go dark on YouTube TV

Walt Disney Co. is alerting viewers that its channels may go dark on YouTube TV amid tense contract negotiations between the two television giants.

The companies are struggling to hammer out a new distribution deal on YouTube TV for Disney’s channels, including ABC, ESPN, FX, National Geographic and Disney Channel. YouTube TV has become one of the most popular U.S. pay-TV services, boasting about 10 million subscribers for its packages of traditional television channels.

Those customers risk losing Disney’s channels, including KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles and other ABC affiliates nationwide if the two companies fail to forge a new carriage agreement by Oct. 30, when their pact expires.

“Without an agreement, we’ll have to remove Disney’s content from YouTube TV,” the Google Inc.-owned television service said Thursday in a statement.

Disney began sounding the alarm by running messages on its TV channels to warn viewers about the blackout threat.

The Burbank entertainment company becomes the latest TV programmer to allege that the tech behemoth is throwing its weight around in contract negotiations.

In recent months, both Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp. and Comcast’s NBCUniversal publicly complained that Google’s YouTube TV was attempting to unfairly squeeze them in their separate talks. In the end, both Fox and NBCUniversal struck new carriage contracts without their channels going dark.

Univision wasn’t as fortunate. The smaller, Spanish-language media company’s networks went dark last month on YouTube TV when the two companies failed to reach a deal.

“For the fourth time in three months, Google’s YouTube TV is putting their subscribers at risk of losing the most valuable networks they signed up for,” a Disney spokesperson said Thursday in a statement. “This is the latest example of Google exploiting its position at the expense of their own customers.”

YouTube TV, for its part, alleged that Disney was the one making unreasonable demands.

“We’ve been working in good faith to negotiate a deal with Disney that pays them fairly for their content on YouTube TV,” a YouTube TV spokesperson said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Disney is proposing costly economic terms that would raise prices on YouTube TV customers and give our customers fewer choices, while benefiting Disney’s own live TV products – like Hulu + Live TV and, soon, Fubo.”

Disney’s Hulu + Live TV competes directly with YouTube TV by offering the same channels. Fubo is a sports streaming service that Disney is in the process of acquiring.

YouTube said if Disney channels remain “unavailable for an extended period of time,” it would offer its customers a $20 credit.

The contract tussle heightens tensions from earlier this year, when Disney’s former distribution chief, Justin Connolly, left in May to take a similar position at YouTube TV. Connolly had spent two decades at Disney and ESPN and Disney sued to block the move, but a judge allowed Connolly to take his new position.

YouTube TV launched in April 2017 for $35 a month. The package of channels now costs $82.99.

To attract more sports fans, YouTube TV took over the NFL Sunday Ticket premium sports package from DirecTV, which had been losing more than $100 million a year to maintain the NFL service. YouTube TV offers Sunday Ticket as a base plan add-on or as an individual channel on YouTube.

Last year, YouTube generated $54.2 billion in revenue, second only to Disney among television companies, according to research firm MoffettNathanson.

The dispute comes as NFL and college football is in full swing, with games on ABC and ESPN. The NBA season also tipped off this week and ESPN prominently features those games. ABC’s fall season began last month with fresh episodes of such favorite programs as “Dancing with the Stars” and “Abbott Elementary.”

ABC stations also air popular newscasts including “Good Morning America” and “World News Tonight with David Muir.” Many ABC stations, including in Los Angeles, run Sony’s “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!”

“We invest significantly in our content and expect our partners to pay fair rates that recognize that value,” Disney said. “If we don’t reach a fair deal soon, YouTube TV customers will lose access to ESPN and ABC, and all our marquee programming – including the NFL, college football, NBA and NHL seasons – and so much more.”