President Donald Trump on April 2, 2026 imposed a 100% tariff on patented pharmaceutical products under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act while simultaneously overhauling the tariff structure for steel, aluminum, and copper imports. The twin actions mark a significant escalation in U.S. trade policy, extending national-security tariffs into a sector that had been explicitly shielded from earlier import duties.
What Trump’s New Pharmaceutical Tariff Changes
The White House announced that patented pharmaceutical products and their active ingredients will face a 100% tariff under a Section 232 national-security determination. The order gives certain large companies 120 days before the duties take effect, while smaller companies receive a 180-day implementation window.
Generic pharmaceuticals, biosimilars, and their associated ingredients are excluded from the order for now. Products originating from countries with existing trade agreements, including the EU, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein, face a reduced 15% rate instead of the headline tariff.
The administration also built in incentives for domestic production. Companies that commit to manufacturing drugs in the United States would face a 20% tariff, while firms that both onshore production and sign “most-favored nation” pricing agreements would be exempt entirely, Axios reported.
How the White House Reworked Steel, Aluminum, and Copper Duties
Alongside the pharma order, the administration recalibrated its existing Section 232 metals tariffs into content-based tiers. The change is not a broad cut or a blanket increase; it is a reclassification that ties the duty rate to how much metal a finished product actually contains.
Articles made entirely or almost entirely of steel, aluminum, or copper now face a flat 50% tariff. Derivative articles that are substantially made of those metals will pay 25% on their full value. The framework also includes 15% and 10% buckets for products with progressively less metal content.
Products containing 15% or less steel, aluminum, or copper by weight will no longer be subject to Section 232 metals duties at all. This threshold-based exemption is a notable shift from the previous approach, which applied duties more broadly regardless of metal content share.
The tiered structure matters for industries that use metals as components rather than primary materials. Companies producing goods with moderate metal content, from electronics casings to automotive parts, could see meaningful duty reductions, while raw metal importers face the steepest rates. The restructuring is relevant for platforms that have recently added metals and commodities trading, as the new tariff tiers could influence spot pricing on those instruments.
Why This Marks a Broader Trade Escalation
The pharmaceutical tariff is particularly significant because the sector had been carved out of earlier trade actions. A February 20, 2026 White House fact sheet imposing a temporary 10% import duty on a wide range of goods explicitly exempted pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients from that surcharge.
The April 2 order reverses that exemption through a different legal mechanism. Rather than folding drugs into the existing broad import duty, the administration opened a new sector-specific front under Section 232’s national-security authority. This makes the pharma tariff a distinct escalation, not a carryover from the February action.
Both the pharmaceutical and metals orders are framed around U.S. supply-chain resilience and national security. The White House has positioned domestic manufacturing capacity as a security imperative, using tariff pressure to incentivize onshoring across sectors from raw materials to finished drugs.
The scale of these actions adds to a broader environment of trade-driven uncertainty. Macro policy shifts of this magnitude tend to ripple into risk-sensitive markets, similar to how large-scale financial disruptions like the $286 million Drift Protocol exploit can rapidly reshape market risk sentiment. Crypto markets, which have shown increasing correlation with macro trade policy, are likely to price in the supply-chain implications over the coming weeks.
Even speculative token markets driven by headline events demonstrate how quickly global news cycles feed into digital asset volatility. For trade-sensitive sectors and global supply chains, the combination of a new pharma tariff with restructured metals duties represents one of the most consequential single-day tariff actions of the current administration.
The pharmaceutical tariffs take effect in 120 to 180 days depending on company size, giving affected firms a narrow window to adjust supply chains, pursue domestic manufacturing commitments, or negotiate for the reduced rates available under the onshoring and pricing provisions.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency and digital asset markets carry significant risk. Always do your own research before making decisions.
