Eli Lilly Opposes Trump’s MFN Drug Pricing Act, Says CEO Ricks

Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks speaks in the Oval Office during an event on weight loss drugs at the White House in Washington on November 6, 2025.

Andrew Caballero Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images

Eli Lilly is rejecting the White House’s push to codify MFN drug pricing into law, CEO Dave Ricks said in an interview with CNBC.

Lilly is one of more than a dozen drugmakers that signed deals with the Trump administration last year agreeing to charge similar prices for prescription drugs in the U.S. to those in other wealthy countries. President Donald Trump has long complained that Americans pay high prices to subsidize low drug prices in the rest of the world.

The pharmaceutical industry assumed that the agreements would allay these concerns and thwart attempts to make MFN pricing law. But the White House has pushed Congress in recent months to codify elements of the agreements. The draft text has not been shared publicly, although the government has said it is trying to persuade pharmaceutical companies to support the effort.

Lilly doesn’t support it, Ricks said.

“When you bring it into the congressional process, what goes in is not what comes out,” Ricks said. “And I think we see a lot of people who would rather lower prices today and not worry about whether we’ll have new drugs tomorrow and not worry about whether America will have a robust pharmaceutical industry and we’ll be able to do research in this country. And I worry about those things, so I don’t think that’s a great idea, and we’ve been pretty clear about that with the administration and congressional leaders.”

Ricks said he thinks the Trump administration and leadership on the Hill are listening to the company’s concerns, but said Lilly will use “every tool we have to combat bad policy, and we believe it would be bad policy.”

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