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Trump Promised the ‘World’s Lowest’ Drug Prices. We Checked the Numbers.

March 18, 2026

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President Trump and top federal health officials have repeatedly claimed that their new website, TrumpRx, offers Americans the world’s lowest prices on prescription drugs.

“I took prescription drugs, a very big part of health care, from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest,” Mr. Trump said during his State of the Union address last month.

That is not true, according to a review by The New York Times and the German news organizations Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, and WDR.

The drugs listed on TrumpRx can cost American patients up to hundreds or thousands of dollars, while a patient walking into a German pharmacy pays next to nothing. The German health system foots the bill, and records show that, more often than not, it pays less than what the Trump administration negotiated for Americans.

The TrumpRx website shows the prices that the administration negotiated for a few dozen of the several thousand prescription medications in the United States. The list includes almost none of the most widely used drugs, like statins, or ultra-expensive drugs like cancer therapies.

Some well-known drugs on the list are Xeljanz, for autoimmune conditions, and Farxiga, for diabetes and heart and kidney problems. Both are cheaper in Germany, a rare example of a country that makes its negotiated drug prices public.

The biggest names on TrumpRx are two blockbuster weight-loss drugs — Wegovy and Zepbound. Both are available for lower out-of-pocket prices at pharmacies in wealthy countries around the world. In some cases, Americans pay about twice as much as patients overseas.

Higher price for Wegovy on TrumpRx

How much patients pay out of pocket at a pharmacy, without using insurance, for a four-week supply of a medium dose (one milligram) of Wegovy, Novo Nordisk’s injection for weight loss.

Some countries, like Germany, mandate the same prices at every pharmacy. In the other countries, some pharmacies may charge more or less than the price in the chart.

Source: Prices at local pharmacies.

Rebecca Robbins/The New York Times

The review by The Times and its German partners is an assessment of one of Mr. Trump’s signature domestic issues. With gas prices rising because of the unpopular war in Iran, the president is counting on his drug policy to resonate with voters who are concerned about affordability. Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed that this policy alone should be enough to carry Republicans to victory in November’s midterm elections.

Our analysis shows that with some drugs, Mr. Trump appears to have modestly narrowed the gap between European and U.S. prices. But the gap persists, and the reality does not match his hyperbole. That is particularly true for patent-protected drugs, which consistently were cheaper in Germany.

White House officials and pharmaceutical companies contested our findings. They argued that the gap disappears after adjusting for the economic conditions in every country. That means that TrumpRx prices can count as cheaper, even when the price is higher.

The administration did not provide enough detail about how it ran those numbers for that claim to be checked. We examined raw numbers, comparing prices in U.S. dollars.

“By any objective measure, no president has accomplished what President Trump has in the past year alone to lower prescription drug prices for American patients,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said.

Mr. Trump has long complained that Americans pay too much for medicines while Europeans pay too little. The president diagnosed a real disparity: Brand-name drugs in the United States have been shown to be three times as expensive, on average, as those in other wealthy nations.

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https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/18/multimedia/18int-drug-prices-01-tkfl/18int-drug-prices-01-tkfl-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webpPresident Trump unveiled the TrumpRx website last month. Visitors to the site are greeted by a promise: “Find the world’s lowest prices on prescription drugs.” Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times

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Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com

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