Can the pharmacy of the world test its own medicine?

Akshara· Host0:00

[upbeat music] In today's episode, we'll break down two important stories. First, we'll talk about whether the pharmacy of the world can test its own medicine, and then we'll talk about what plastic actually is. Welcome back to The Daily Brief by Zerodha, where we cut through the noise to help you understand what's actually happening in the most important stories from business and markets. I'm your host Akshara, and today is Friday, 10th April. Coming to the first story. So on April 2nd, the first anniversary of his infamous Liberation Day, Donald Trump signed an executive order slapping 100% tariffs on most patented drugs imported into the United States. Briefly, we wondered if this was yet another barb hurled at India's economy. But then, as the Global Trade Research Initiative clarified, India is largely shielded. After all, most of our pharmaceutical industry doesn't make patented drugs at all. We manufacture generics. India sold over $10 billion of pharmaceuticals to the US last year, nearly all of which were copies of drugs that someone else invented. For now, this fact might have helped us somewhat escape a geoeconomic threat, but it also points to a ceiling. The entire Indian pharmaceutical industry earned $55 billion last year. Merck, a single pharmaceutical innovator, made $58 billion in pharma sales around the same time. That's the difference between manufacturing a drug and developing one.