On Saturday, President Trump ordered import taxes on goods from Canada, China, and Mexico. The move could raise costs for consumers across the economy, including in health care. 

China is a large and growing producer of pharmaceutical ingredients, and prices could go up for finished drugs if costs for their ingredients increase. Mexico is the top source of medical devices used in the U.S. Hospitals rely on imports for everyday supplies like gowns, gloves, and syringes, but also for big ticket items like CT scanners and X-ray equipment. Read more from STAT’s John Wilkerson on the potential effects. 

from AXIOS:

Health info blackout shocks providers

By April Rubin and Maya Goldman

Photo: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Thousands of webpages containing federal health guidelines and data went dark last week, only for some to reappear over the weekend without clarity on what had been changed or removed — and with disclaimers noting that the pages could be further modified.Why it matters: The removed sites, primarily maintained by CDC, covered issues like contraception, transgender health and climate change that President Trump and Republicans have repeatedly targeted.The blackout shook health researchers and providers and raised the specter of the Trump administration limiting what public health information Americans can see.The information affected included CDC guidelines for treating sexually transmitted infections, used to know what tests to run and lay out treatment plans, said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.Without access, “people will get sick. And, especially in cases like congenital syphilis where you cannot lose a day to treat, babies will die,” he said in a statement. The information has since reappeared.Another affected website is used by clinicians to select birth control after a recent pregnancy. It helps rule out risky options if a patient has a heart condition or even is breastfeeding, physician and public health researcher Jeremy Faust wrote on Substack.State of play: A New York Times analysis found that more than 8,000 webpages across federal websites, including 3,000 from CDC, had been removed since Friday afternoon.Data sets also disappeared: More than 2,200 data sets came offline between President Trump’s inauguration and Friday afternoon, according to tallies compiled from data.gov, a repository of publicly available federal data, and the Internet Archive.Some had been restored as of Sunday.The CDC’s website for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which hosts vaccine recommendations for kids and adults, went down on Friday evening but was back online by Saturday.But references to COVID-19 vaccine and pneumococcal vaccine recommendations approved during ACIP’s October meeting that appeared on a webpage captured before Trump’s inauguration appear to have been removed.Read morefrom ENDPOINTS:Drug prices likely to soar due to Trump tariffs, pharma bodies warn Anna Brown News Reporter Pharmaceutical industry groups caution that President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada will likely exacerbate existing drug shortages in the US, raise drug prices and put generic manufacturers out of the market. The Trump administration imposed a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on China on Saturday. The US relies on importing pharmaceutical products globally, in particular from China, which is a large supplier of APIs. John Murphy Tariffs will put a strain on “already problematic drug shortages” by forcing generic manufacturers out of the market due to low profit margins, warned Association for Accessible Medicines CEO John Murphy. Generic manufacturers, many of which import key ingredients from China, already sell their products at very low prices, and extra taxes will only make this worse, Murphy said. As generic manufacturers cannot absorb the high cost, the increases are likely to fall onto patients. The Healthcare Distribution Alliance has also called for the Trump administration to reconsider including pharma products in the tariffs, stating drug shortages in the US will worsen. Further, the HDA has asked Trump to invest in domestic manufacturing for raw materials and finished drug products to improve the supply of medicines. Some foreign pharma manufacturers have already made plans to mitigate the threat of import taxes into the US. For example, South Korean manufacturer Celltrion is looking to buy up US factories as a means to sidestep the tariffs.