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Takeaways
- Novartis plans to invest $23 Billion in the construction and expansion U.S. facilities.
- The move comes after President Trump earlier this week threatened "major" tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
- Novartis' CEO said tariffs were a consideration but not the driving factor behind the investment, Reuters reported Thursday.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced plans to invest $23billion in the construction and expansion 10 U.S. manufacturing facilities, as drugmakers prepare themselves for possible tariffs by the Trump administration.
The planned investment includes six manufacturing plants as well as a San Diego-based site for research and development to be built within the next five years. Novartis plans to build two of the six plants that will manufacture cancer treatments in Florida and Texas.
Novartis has said that it expects to create over 4,000 American jobs including 1,000 roles within the company.
The move comes amid uncertainty over tariffs
Novartis announced its decision after President Donald Trump said earlier this week that his administration would “announce very soon a major tariff on Pharmaceuticals.”
"We're going to tariff our pharmaceuticals, and once we do that they're going to come rushing back into our country because we're the big market," Trump said at a dinner hosted by the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Reuters reported that Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, said that tariffs were a factor but not the main driving force behind the investment.
Novartis shares were barely changed on Thursday, despite a general market decline. The stock has risen about 6% since 2025, as of Thursday’s closing. (Read Investopedia’s live coverage of today’s market action here.)
In February, rival drugmaker Eli Lilly (LLY) said it would invest at least $27 billion to build four new pharmaceutical manufacturing sites in the U.S. A month later, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) announced plans to raise its domestic investments to $55 billion over the next four years.
