Trade & Channel Strategies 2025: Waiting, Watching, and Reshoring

In his presentation, “Mastering Global Trade, Tariffs, and More in a Changing World—Lessons for Pharmaceutical Supply Chains,” Thani Jambulingam, PhD, professor of food, pharma, and healthcare business at Saint Joseph’s University’s Erivan K. Haub School of Business, focused on separating perception from reality when it comes to the impact of tariffs on the pharmaceutical industry. While trade policy and tariffs have dominated headlines, he emphasized that a one-size-fits-all view of pharma supply chains can lead to flawed decision-making.

The central premise of his discussion was the need for product-level analysis. Pharmaceuticals encompass a wide range of product types—including generics, biosimilars, branded drugs, and advanced therapies such as cell and gene treatments—each with distinct supply-chain structures, regulatory considerations, and cost sensitivities. As a result, the effect of tariffs varies significantly depending on the product category, making holistic assessments both misleading and ineffective.

He noted that despite widespread discussion about escalating tariffs, the actual impact to date has been limited. In many cases, tariffs remain close to zero, creating a disconnect between public discourse and on-the-ground realities. The primary area of tangible change has been at the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) level, particularly for materials sourced from China, where tariffs have been proposed or implemented in the range of 7.5% to 25%. However, on the finished-goods side, Jambulingam pointed out that little has materially changed.

This imbalance has generated confusion across the industry, with companies struggling to determine how urgently they need to respond. Jambulingam’s goal was to clarify the current state of affairs, acknowledging the significant amount of “noise” surrounding trade policy while emphasizing that dramatic supply-chain shifts have largely not yet materialized.

Ultimately, his message was one of strategic focus and measured response: pharmaceutical manufacturers should resist reacting broadly to tariff headlines and instead evaluate risk, sourcing decisions, and mitigation strategies at the individual product level—where the real impact, if and when it comes, will be felt most acutely.

He also commented on how these pharma supply chain lessons can be applied in the future; why he believes wholesalers will remain indispensable despite pharma’s push into direct-to-patient sales; and much more.

A transcript of his conversation with PC can be found below.

PC: How can these types of pharma supply chains lessons be applied over the next five to 10 years, and even beyond?

Jambulingam: Right now, it's a wait-and-see type of an approach. We really don't know what it's going to be in the final set of tariff regulations that we need to follow. We don't know yet, so we need to wait and see. If you have to think about that, there will be some level of reshoring for sure. Companies have to bring their manufacturing to the US—that part, some of it will come true.

Some hard-to-find APIs and things like that: there will be incentives for them to come to the US. Companies that are thinking about going through infrastructure building, especially for new products, there is also an incentive system through the Commissioner’s National Priority Vouchers, and that could also be a trigger for these companies to get it approved here, because then you will shave off some time and be able to get to market sooner.