Nearly 7 in 10 voters approve of Trump’s executive order asking the pharmaceutical industry to voluntarily reduce prices of drugs sold in the United States, including a healthy majority of Democrats and independents. The move faces very little resistance from voters, though Democrats — averse to Trump — are more likely than others to oppose it.
The order comes as Republicans in Congress face a big trust deficit to their Democratic counterparts on health care generally, an issue where Trump’s approval is also in the red as the party’s governing trifecta is taking big hits for attempting to slash spending on programs such as Medicaid.
At the same time, most voters consistently (66% in this week’s tracking) say Trump’s Washington should make the reduction of health care costs a top priority, often similar to the share who say the same of consumer costs more broadly. On top of this, our report on corporate political engagement found that large swaths of the public would like to see politicians be more critical of the health care industry (even more so than the firearm industry).
It’s worth noting that the order itself is essentially toothless. That’s a fairly favorable outcome for a pharmaceutical industry that had feared Trump would be able to convince Republicans in Congress to codify the policies as a revenue-generating provision in the party’s signature budget reconciliation legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
However, Trump’s interest in the policy and its widespread popularity should nonetheless alarm a pharmaceutical industry of the very real threat posed by increasing populist impulses in both political parties.
Read our report, “Navigating the Trump Era: Corporate Engagement in 2025.”
