In a stunning betrayal of free-market principles, President Donald Trump issued an executive order imposing socialist-style price controls on the pharmaceutical industry, effectively dictating what drugmakers can charge for life-saving medications.
The May 12, 2025, decree, framed as an effort to combat “global freeloading,” empowers the federal government to strong-arm manufacturers into selling drugs at government-mandated prices—mirroring the very policies once denounced by conservatives as “Big Government Socialism.”
The order, which invokes the power of the state to enforce “most-favored-nation pricing,” threatens severe penalties for companies that refuse to comply, including antitrust crackdowns, importation waivers, and even the revocation of drug approvals.
This heavy-handed approach aligns with the price-fixing schemes of the Biden-era “Build Back Better Act,” which Trump’s America First Policy Institute warned would “jeopardize the future of prescription drugs for Americans” by crushing innovation and restricting access to generics.
Indeed, the parallels to ‘socialist’ healthcare models are undeniable.
The order directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to unilaterally set price targets within 30 days, echoing the “Fair Price Negotiation Program” of the so-called “Big Government Socialism Bill”—a program that, in reality, functioned as a blunt instrument of coercion, backed by a 95% excise tax on noncompliant companies.
As the America First Policy Institute’s 2021 brief documented, such price controls “will likely lead to less innovation, fewer generic drug approvals, and higher launch prices for new medicines.”
The consequences of this government overreach could be catastrophic. Independent analyses, including a University of Chicago study cited in the brief, projected that similar policies would slash global pharmaceutical revenues by 12%, leading to 135 fewer new drugs by 2039 and a staggering 331.5 million life-years lost.
By dismantling the market-driven incentives that fuel breakthroughs, the administration risks condemning future patients to a world with fewer cures—all while falsely branding its intervention as “putting Americans first.”
Equally alarming is the order’s threat to generic competition. By artificially suppressing prices, the government risks strangling the pipeline of affordable alternatives, leaving seniors trapped with costlier branded medications. As the brief warned, “Price controls prevent creation of more affordable generics,” undermining a sector that has saved Americans $2 trillion over the past decade.
The hypocrisy is glaring. A president who once railed against socialist healthcare policies now embraces their core tactic: government dictating prices under threat of punitive action. The America First Policy Institute’s analysis could not be clearer: “Government price setting negatively impacts innovation and will result in fewer new medications.” Yet the administration forges ahead, disregarding the warnings of economists and jeopardizing the very system that has made American medical innovation the envy of the world.
This is not free-market reform—it is a lurch toward the centralized control conservatives have long claimed that they opposed.
The victims will not be patients awaiting the next breakthrough, or seniors reliant on affordable generics, or even a nation whose medical preeminence depends on the freedom to innovate.
Socialism, by any name, is still socialism, whether it arrives from the left or from a right-wing tyrant occupying the Oval Office, but if it accomplishes the goal of lowering drug prices without harming anyone but the greedy corporate aristocrats who have been killing Americans by driving up the cost of remaining alive, perhaps it will break the fear that has surrounded this boogeyman for so long.
“Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years,” said Harry Truman. “Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”
Trump might gain some political momentum by stealing his adversary’s tactic, but this could push the Republicans to begin to abandon the unprincipled tyrant.
Regardless of what the future holds, Americans no longer need to fear creeping socialism, or any other kind.