Ten years ago, President Donald Trump put Europe on notice, telling them the status quo on defense spending was unsustainable — and that America would not continue to shoulder the cost of keeping the European Union safe. Trump was right, but leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not want to listen.
Only after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine did they realize their mistake. Fast forward to 2026, and Scholz’s successor, Friedrich Merz, now aspires to command Europe’s largest army.
It’s a significant acknowledgment that shows Trump was right. Now it’s time for a similar reckoning in another area where the United States has long subsidized Europe: biomedical research and development that underpins breakthrough advances for life-saving therapies.
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For decades, Germany and other wealthy European countries have maintained strict government controls on drug prices. Their citizens pay far less for many lifesaving medicines than Americans do — and are only able to because Americans are responsible for an outsize share of the costs of innovation.
The U.S. accounts for a massive, disproportionate share of pharmaceutical investment, innovation, and revenue. That revenue finances the risky and extraordinarily expensive process of developing new treatments for cancer, rare diseases, Alzheimer’s, and countless other conditions.
Most experimental drugs fail. Companies spend billions on research with no guarantee of success. Yet European governments frequently leverage centralized price negotiations to suppress what they pay once those drugs reach the market.
Trump is working to change this, and his efforts are already bearing fruit.
Since the release of his executive order on drug pricing last year, the administration’s agreements with pharmaceutical companies could save the country $529 billion over the next 10 years, according to White House economists’ estimates.
What’s more, other countries are starting to come around to the president’s view on this issue. Take the United Kingdom, for example, which agreed late last year to pay 25% more for innovative drugs in exchange for relief from Trump’s tariffs.
Germany, unfortunately, is going the opposite direction than some of its European neighbors by pushing new legislation that would see Europe’s largest economy pay even less for the world’s most innovative drugs.
This is just another example of European free riding. Germany benefits from the existence of cutting-edge American and global pharmaceutical innovation while contributing less toward sustaining the system that produces it.
This is the same lopsided dynamic that has frustrated Americans when it comes to funding for NATO. For years, the U.S. spent heavily on military protection, allowing European governments to allocate more resources to domestic priorities.
American officials — Trump chief among them — vocally argued that this arrangement was economically unsustainable. Eventually, Germany itself accepted that it needed to contribute more.
Prescription drugs present a parallel challenge. Price controls on drugs in Germany drive up the cost of those medicines for Americans — yet another case of U.S. consumers subsidizing nations that don’t pay their fair share. German policymakers may celebrate their negotiating prowess, but the reality is the American people cannot and should not be forced to foot the bill any longer.
This imbalance matters even more now, as we face mounting fiscal pressure and intensifying strategic competition with China. We should question every structure in the post-Cold War global order that places disproportionate burdens on the American economy. Thanks to Trump, trade, defense, manufacturing, energy, and now healthcare are all being reevaluated through the same lens: are America’s allies contributing enough?
Our wealthy allies should recognize that perpetually forcing Americans to absorb the lion’s share of global drug-development costs is not the smart path forward. Trump’s existing Section 301 investigation into the European Union is taking them to task on manufacturing overcapacity that threatens American jobs, and it should expand to cover European pharmaceutical free riding, which undermines American manufacturing and increases our healthcare costs.
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If Germany and the rest of the European Union want continued access to the world’s most advanced medicines, they should pony up to finance the innovation ecosystem that makes them possible. That means paying their fair share, distributing research costs more equitably, and creating stronger incentives for breakthrough therapies.
This isn’t complicated — durable alliances require allies to pull their weight. Germany has already been forced to acknowledge Trump was right about its defense policy, and they’d be smart to admit he is right about their healthcare policy.
Tim Sheehy is a United States senator representing the state of Montana.