Trump's Big Week: Middle East Trip, China Deal, Pharma EO, "Big, Beautiful Bill" with Ben Shapiro

Ben Shapiro argues Trump's MFN drug pricing EO will suppress pharma R&D and raise costs for private insurance holders by squeezing manufacturer margins rather than pressuring foreign governments to pay their fair share.

“If you want to kill R&D, this is a great way to kill R&D. People in the United States, I don't think, have a clue as to how much money gets spent on R&D that craps out.”▶ Listen · 1:32:03 ⚑

ChamathCommentary

Chamath warns that Trump's MFN drug pricing EO, combined with already-thin pharma ROI (~1.5%) and soaring trial costs, risks further suppressing R&D investment and pushing innovation offshore to China.

“The average ROI for broad-based pharma is 1.5% as of 2022. If you then further affect the profitability scale of pharma, the impact is probably that we push R&D to different places.”▶ Listen · 1:28:40 ⚑

FriedbergCommentary

Friedberg argues the US should continue and expand its role as the world's largest LNG exporter, framing natural gas as a cleaner energy source than oil or coal and a key asset to monetize on America's balance sheet.

“the United States should be, as we are today, an LNG or liquefied natural gas or liquid methane exporter... Methane, when it burns to create electricity, is 60% less carbon into the atmosphere than burning oil or coal.”▶ Listen · 1:11:23 ⚑

ChamathCommentary

Chamath highlights Groq's $1.7B AI inference deal with Saudi Arabia and its unique US export license for AI inference as major milestones for a company he co-founded 10 years ago.

“we announced almost $2 billion deal, $1.7 I think is what it was. This is Groq. Groq did a deal. Yeah, for AI inference. We're starting to build some enormous data centers in Saudi.”▶ Listen · 14:40 ⚑

FriedbergCommentary

Friedberg argues PBMs (CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, OptumRx) are exploitative middlemen generating excess profits through opaque markups and should be removed from the drug pricing system.

“Between 2017 and 2022, the estimate that these companies generated $7.3 billion in excess profit by marking up prices. On specialty generic drugs. The list goes on, on kind of the egregious behavior and the role that they play as middlemen”▶ Listen · 1:35:06 ⚑