Donald Trump, pictured on the roof of the West Wing of the White House on Tuesday, claims he will confirm tariffs on drug imports ‘within the next week or so’ - Samuel Corum/Pool/EPA/Shutterstock

Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 250pc on pharmaceutical imports in a major threat to one of Britain’s key sectors.

The US president, who has already warned global drugmakers to lower their domestic prices in the US, said he would be announcing tariffs for the industry “within the next week or so”.

Such a move could be damaging for the UK, which counts pharma giants AstraZeneca and GSK as two of its largest companies and employs 73,000 people in the sector overall.

Britain has signed a trade agreement with the US but the pharmaceutical tariffs are expected to be outside the scope of the agreement, increasing the risk.

“We’ll be putting an initially small tariff on pharmaceuticals but in one year, one and a half years maximum it’s going to go to 150pc and then it’s going to go to 250pc,” Mr Trump said in a US television interview on Tuesday.

The president added that he would impose tariffs on pharmaceutical imports to the US “because we want pharmaceuticals made in our country”.

It marks a fresh threat to the industry, which is awaiting the outcome of an investigation by the US commerce department into the impact of imports on American national security.

The US president said the tariffs on pharmaceutical imports would be “a separate class” to a string of tariff deals announced in recent weeks, adding: “These are excluded class, as I call them ... like steel, aluminium, etc.”

Mr Trump has repeatedly made threats to impose various levels of tariffs on the industry before changing course. His latest comments on trade levies come just days before his latest tariff deadline on goods entering the US comes into effect on Aug 7.

The president was also critical of India after the country’s foreign ministry accused the US and the EU of double standards on buying Russian oil.

The US is due to impose 25pc tariffs on imports from India but Trump threatened to lift this further in his latest escalation.

“We settled on 25pc but I think I’m going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours because they are buying Russian oil, they are fuelling the war machine, and if they’re going do that I’m not going to be happy,” he said, adding that India had “not been a good trading partner”.

“The sticking point with India is that tariffs are too high ... They will give us zero tariffs and they’re going to let us go in but that’s not good enough because of what they are doing with oil.”

Mr Trump also renewed his attacks on Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and repeated his calls for the central bank to cut interest rates.

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“Jay Powell is highly political and I call him ... Too Late Jerome, Too Late Powell,” he said.

Mr Trump added that Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, “does not want” to be chairman of the Federal Reserve but said that there were four others in the running for the position.

Mr Powell’s term as chairman of the Federal Reserve ends in May 2026.

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