Trump's latest lunacy

I may be being unfair here, but the latest claim amongst American who like Trump's tariffs is that the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is a non-tariff barrier to trade. They may be the lunatics involved here rather than Trump himself.
The Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme buys medicines which have been approved as effective and cost-effective, and sells them on cheaply to patients whose doctors have prescribed the medicines.
It's no kind of barrier to trade - anybody who wants a particular drug can buy it directly from the manufacturer at a price they negotiate with manufacturer.
They won't have the buying power of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which buys in much larger volumes, and employs people who know exactly what they are buying, and who the alternative suppliers are.
When I read the New Yorker I see ads for medicines aimed directly at consumers. I don't see them in periodicals aimed only at the Australian market, not because they are illegal, but because not enough people in Australia would act on such advertisements.
We all know that if a drug is safe and effective we will be able to get more cheaply through our doctors and the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
There is a lively market for illegal drugs in Australia - tests on the outflow from our sewage systems demonstrate that a lot cocaine and other illegal drugs do get consumed here,
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/12/australia-drug-use-wastewater-testing-methamphetamine-increase
So the US pharmaceutical industry wants to operate with the same kind of freedom as illegal drug traffickers. They wouldn't sell as much - the Pharmaceutical Benefits scheme sell to patients at less than purchase cost, on the basis that curing patients is cheaper than treating them indefinitely, so we buy more than we would if individual patients had to pay the full cost - but they might be able to extort higher prices from patients who could afford to pay.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney