Pfizer CEO attending $25 million fundraiser at Trump’s golf club after president demands drug price cuts, sources say

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is among those expected at a fundraiser President Trump is attending Friday at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, sources told CBS News. 

The fundraiser for the pro-Trump super political action committee MAGA Inc. aims to raise about $25 million, one of the sources said.

One day prior to the event, Mr. Trump sent letters to pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, demanding they lower U.S. drug prices to more evenly match what other countries pay.

The White House’s letters to 17 drug companies, including AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi, asked for commitments within 60 days to sell drugs for Medicaid patients and all new drugs at “most favored nation” rates. The president posted images of the letters to Truth Social.

Mr. Trump signed an executive order in May telling federal officials to draw up “most favored nation” regulations unless pharmaceutical companies made progress toward cutting prices. This week’s letters — which were addressed to Bourla and the other CEOs — accused the drugmakers of promising “more of the same” since then.

The president said Friday he’s “gone to war with the drug companies and, frankly, other countries” on the drug price issue.

“I think we’re going to be very successful fairly soon. We’ll have drug prices coming down by 500, 600 800 even 1,200 percent,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Newsmax on Friday afternoon. 

The high cost of prescription drugs has vexed both parties for decades. Proposals to tie drug prices for U.S. patients to the typically much-lower rates charged in other developed countries have floated around for years, but the idea has faced some legal pushback. 

Meanwhile, drugmakers argue price caps could discourage innovation by making it harder to pay for research and development for new drugs. The industry also argues that Americans tend to have access to more groundbreaking drugs than residents of foreign countries with stricter price regulations — and says high drug prices are just one part of a broader trend of higher healthcare spending in the U.S.

Bourla has engaged with Mr. Trump in the past. Pfizer was one of the drugmakers that was picked to rapidly develop COVID-19 vaccines in the first Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed.” And two weeks before Mr. Trump’s second inauguration, Bourla and other Pfizer executives traveled to Mar-A-Lago for meetings, the Financial Times has previously reported.

CBS News has reached out to Pfizer and the White House for comment.