Trump announces pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly plans to build 6 US plants

Donald Trump stated on Thursday that the chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly informed him of plans to construct six new plants in the United States.

Speaking during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump praised the executive, saying, "I spoke with the head of Eli Lilly, who's a fantastic guy, a star actually, he's a star, very smart, and he told me he's building six plants in the United States, big ones."

Last year, Eli Lilly had announced intentions to invest at least $2.7 billion into building four U.S. facilities, aiming to boost production and strengthen medical supply chains.

The company has since detailed plans for three of these sites, located in Alabama, Virginia, and Texas.

A spokesperson for Lilly clarified that the company has, in fact, announced plans for nine new manufacturing sites across the US since 2020, which includes the three recently detailed.

In November, Trump announced his administration had reached a deal with two drug makers to lower prices of popular GLP-1 diabetes medications for Americans on Medicare and Medicaid as well as for those who purchase the drugs on the administration’s forthcoming TrumpRx website.

Speaking in the Oval Office at the time, Trump said he was “thrilled” to announce “tremendous cuts” and “drastic discounts” for the “very effective drugs,” which he referred to as “the fat drugs” and remarked that he’d “never heard anything bad” about the wildly popular medications.

Trump said GLP-1 makers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk were “joining the phenomenal list” of drug companies that have capitulated to his administration’s demand that they offer their products on a “most-favored nation” pricing plan, bringing the cost Americans pay for their drugs down to a level on par with countries that pay lower prices through their single-payer health care systems.