Said Lilly CEO T Spritzenheimer, "every time I see an overweight person walking down the street I see a meal ticket. My meal ticket".
Eli Lilly Plans to Spend $27 Billion on New U.S. Plants
The pharmaceutical company expects the expansion will create thousands of jobs
By Liz Essley Whyte, WSJ
Updated Feb. 26, 2025 10:14 am ET
Drugmaker Eli Lilly plans to build four new manufacturing plants in the U.S., a $27 billion investment that the company expects will create 3,000 high-skilled jobs and employ 10,000 construction workers.
Three of the new sites would produce active pharmaceutical ingredients for its drugs, and the fourth would produce sterile injectable medicines such as diabetes drug Mounjaro, Lilly said Wednesday. The company hasn’t picked the locations yet. It expects the plants to be making medicines within five years.
The announcement, by one of the country’s biggest drugmakers, is the latest by a company outlining a major capital push in the U.S. while President Trump seeks to revive domestic manufacturing.
It comes as Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies seek warm relations with the new administration and press it to pursue industry objectives, including the extension of corporate tax cuts enacted during the first Trump administration.
“We hadn’t built a new site in the U.S. in more than 40 years until the first set of Trump tax cuts, so we need to see those either extended or improved to support this,” Lilly Chief Executive David Ricks said in an interview.
Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Sen. Todd Young (R., Indiana) attended a press conference in Washington at which Lilly announced the plans.
“We need steel mills, we need precursor medicines. these are the fundamental underpinnings of America that we need to reshore,” Lutnick said.
Many medicines are made in the U.S., according to Morgan Stanley analysts, though a good portion are made in countries like Ireland and Switzerland. The industry relies on countries such as China for active pharmaceutical ingredients, and Indian firms make many lower-priced generic drugs.
Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on pharmaceutical imports. Industry representatives have expressed concerns about potential levies. Analysts said they wouldn’t have much of a financial impact on companies because of the high margins on medicines.
Lilly said it is negotiating with several states on where to build the new manufacturing plants and welcomes interest from more states until mid-March.
The Indianapolis-based company said the new outlays would follow $23 billion it had invested in U.S. operations from 2020 to 2024, including new manufacturing sites in Wisconsin and North Carolina and expansions in its home state of Indiana.
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