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Roche has said it will spend $50bn on manufacturing and research and development in the US, becoming the latest pharmaceutical company to promise greater investment in the face of potential tariffs on the sector.
The Swiss drug and diagnostics company will make the investment over the next five years, forecasting that it would create 1,000 jobs at Roche and 12,000 in total including construction.
Chief executive Thomas Schinecker stressed that the company already had a large R&D and manufacturing base in the US. In 2009, it acquired US biotech Genentech for $47bn.
“We are proud of our 110 year legacy in the United States which has been a key driver for jobs, innovation and the creation of intellectual property in the US,” he said.
Roche follows its Swiss peer Novartis and US drugmakers Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly in making large commitments to the US since the Trump administration came to power. Novartis announced a $23bn investment plan earlier this month, while J&J pledged $55bn in March, and Eli Lilly announced a $27bn plan in February.
Medical device makers were hit by US tariffs announced at the start of the month, but the pharmaceutical industry was excluded.
However, the administration has launched a probe of the pharma sector that could lead to tariffs. Trump has signalled he would like drugmakers to reshore manufacturing, recently saying: “We don’t make our own drugs, our own pharmaceuticals any more. The drug companies are in Ireland and they’re in lots of other places — China.”
Even though the drug industry was excluded, Switzerland was hit by particularly high 31 per cent tariffs on other imports, much more than the UK and EU. The country exports nearly a quarter of its medical devices to the US and abolished its industrial tariffs last year.
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It was said to be considering billions in investment pledges for the US, rather than tariff retaliation.
The Roche investment in the US will include expanding and upgrading facilities in Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey, Oregon and California, building a new gene therapy factory in Pennsylvania and a site for producing continuous glucose monitoring devices in Indiana.
It is also planning a new manufacturing centre for its next generation weight loss treatments, which include those from a $5.3bn partnership with Zealand Pharma signed last month. But these are still in trials.
Roche will also open a new R&D centre in Massachusetts, which will conduct artificial intelligence research and be a hub for its efforts to develop cardiovascular, renal and metabolic drugs.
