AstraZeneca to Invest $50B to Boost U.S. Drug Manufacturing, R&D

As President Donald Trump’s tariff policies loom, global pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca will invest $50 billion to boost its American manufacturing and R&D infrastructure. 

Chief among the company’s plans is a new, multibillion-dollar drug substance manufacturing facility in Virginia, poised to become AstraZeneca’s largest manufacturing investment to date. The facility will produce components specifically for the company’s weight management and metabolic drug portfolio, including oral GLP-1, baxdrostat and oral PCSK9, per the company, though other details about the project were not immediately available. 

“This project will set the standard for the latest technological advancements in pharmaceutical manufacturing, creating hundreds of highly skilled jobs and helping further strengthen the nation’s domestic supply chain,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in a statement. 

AstraZeneca simultaneously aims to balloon its infrastructure capacity across the country. That includes expansions to its 1.3 million-square-foot life sciences campus in Gaithersburg, Md., and to facilities in Mount Vernon, Indiana and Coppel, Texas; a state-of-the-art R&D campus in Cambridge, Mass.; and “next generation” cell therapy manufacturing sites in Tarzana, Calif., and Rockville, Md. AstraZeneca had already announced its $300 million plans for the Rockville facility, which will focus on producing T-cell therapies, in early 2024.

The company also said this week it will also invest in new sites to supply clinical trials and research into novel medicines. The $50 billion is in addition to the $3.5 billion investment it unveiled in November toward its U.S. research and manufacturing footprint. 

The U.K.-based pharmaceutical company aims to invest the funds by 2030, in a bid to drive its annual revenue to $80 billion by the same year. Roughly 40 percent of AstraZeneca’s 2024 revenue came via the U.S., and the company expects that figure to rise to 50 percent by the end of the decade. It currently operates 19 manufacturing, commercial and R&D sites across the country, employing more than 18,000 people.

AstraZeneca’s move to scale up its U.S. infrastructure comes in the wake of Trump’s tariffs announcements, alongside the president’s effort to swell domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing. Trump has likewise called for domestic drug prices to fall more in line with prices paid in other countries. 

Trump has threatened tariffs as high as 200 percent on global pharmaceuticals to achieve those goals, warning earlier this month that industry-wide tariffs would be announced “very soon.” Those taxes would not necessarily go into effect immediately, however, as the president also said that the industry would receive a grace period of roughly one year to 18 months, to “get their act together.”

“For decades Americans have been reliant on foreign supply of key pharmaceutical products,” Howard Lutnick, U.S. secretary of commerce, added in a statement Monday. “President Trump and our nation’s new tariff policies are focused on ending this structural weakness. … This historic investment is bringing tens of thousands of jobs to the U.S. and will ensure medicine sold in our country is produced right here.”

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.