Trump's re­newed broad­sides on drug pric­ing did­n't even dent bio­phar­ma this time

Late Mon­day Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump took his sec­ond shot at Mer­ck CEO Ken Fra­zier. Clear­ly still ran­kled by Fra­zier’s de­ci­sion to re­sign from Trump’s man­u­fac­tur­ing coun­cil, the pres­i­dent Tweet­ed:

.@Mer­ck Phar­ma is a leader in high­er & high­er drug prices while at the same time tak­ing jobs out of the U.S. Bring jobs back & LOW­ER PRICES!

— Don­ald J. Trump (@re­al­Don­aldTrump) Au­gust 14, 2017

Trump buck­led un­der pres­sure and took a di­rect swipe at right-wing ex­trem­ists on Mon­day, a de­layed re­ac­tion that boiled in­to a vi­ral dis­cus­sion over the pres­i­dent and his re­luc­tance to sin­gle out the KKK and oth­ers from the bul­ly pul­pit of the pres­i­den­cy. But none of it sat­is­fied the pres­i­dent’s crit­ics. The big ques­tion for bio­phar­ma now was whether Trump, who’s gone dead silent on the is­sue of drug pric­ing — un­til yes­ter­day — would rip back in­to the in­dus­try af­ter be­ing an­gered by Fra­zier, one of the few black CEOs in the For­tune 500.

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