INDIA - 2025/02/07: In this photo illustration, the Merck KGaA logo is seen displayed on a mobile phone screen. (Photo Illustration by Idrees Abbas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON, D.C. - President Donald Trump on Friday announced a deal with pharmaceutical company Merck KGaA and its U.S. subsidiary, EMD Serono, to sharply reduce the cost of certain fertility drugs used for in-vitro fertilization.
Under the agreement, Merck KGaA, a German-based drugmaker, will cut the price of some IVF medications by 84 percent.
In return, the company will be exempt from U.S. tariffs on other drugs it manufactures and exports to the United States.
"Other countries are agreeing to it, because if we don’t, we’ll put tariffs on them. And then they agree," Trump said during an Oval Office event.
Dig deeper:
A typical IVF cycle can cost between $12,000 to $25,000 dollars without insurance coverage, according to fertility industry data. Roughly seven in ten Americans lack insurance coverage for IVF treatments.
The discount will not apply to an entire IVF cycle but will cover three medications commonly used in the process. The White House estimates families could save about $2,200 dollars per cycle.
Trump also hinted that other high-priced brand-name medications could be next, including Ozempic, the weight-loss drug made by Danish manufacturer Novo Nordisk.
"Referring to Ozempic—the fat loss drug—it’ll be much lower," Trump said after taking questions at the end of the same White House event announcing the Merck KGaA deal.
He began to elaborate on the negotiations over Ozempic pricing before Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, cut him off and told reporters about the Ozempic deal: "We have not negotiated that one yet."
Currently, Ozempic costs around $500 per month for Americans paying out-of-pocket. Trump said his administration plans to use potential tariffs on Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharmaceutical company, as leverage to bring the price down to $150 a month.
The president criticized pharmaceutical companies for charging Americans higher prices for the same drugs sold in other Western nations.
"The number one fertility drug is 700 percent higher," Trump said. "We’re ending all of that."
The other side:
Dr. Mariana Socal, with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said Trump’s point about international price disparities is partly accurate.
"It is true that in this country we pay on average three to four times higher prices," Socal said. "However, these are branded products."
Socal added that for generic drugs, the opposite is true. Americans actually pay about 15 percent less than consumers in other developed nations.
She said the bigger issue in the U.S. pharmaceutical market is the lack of transparency.
"Prices in the U.S. are not transparent to consumers," Socal said.
The same drug can have two different prices—one negotiated by insurers behind closed doors and another, much higher price that people without insurance must pay out of pocket.
"This really hurts consumers," Socal said.
According to the White House, the discounted IVF medications will be sold directly to consumers through a new website called Trump RX, expected to launch in 2026.
The Source: The previously published video in this story incorrectly featured images and video of Merck, a New Jersey-based company, rather than the Germany-based Merck KGaA. The video was removed, and the story has been updated to reflect the change.