President Trump in silhouette.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Daniel Payne reports on how the health industry and Washington influence and impact each other. He joined STAT in 2025 after covering health care at POLITICO. You can reach Daniel on Signal at danielp.100.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is negotiating new drug-pricing deals, now with smaller companies, according to three people with knowledge of the meetings, including a White House official.

The new talks offer a pathway for smaller pharmaceutical companies — those not included in the first round of deals — to pledge lower prices and potentially avoid tariffs or new pricing policies through Medicare.

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The new negotiations suggest the administration is looking to replicate the strategy it used with larger drugmakers: extract voluntary, confidential agreements in pursuit of lower prices and more domestic manufacturing. They also offer smaller players in the sector, which have faced substantial uncertainty about how federal policies would affect them, the chance to cut a deal and gain more certainty about how they might be affected by federal policies. 

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