Trump's fuzzy math

Driving the news: Last week, the president said that his administration will be "reducing drug costs over the next year ... by not 50 or 60%, by a 1,000%."

• In response to Axios' request for clarification on the president's remarks, the White House said that Trump was "correctly" identifying that Americans pay more than other wealthy nations do for the same drugs.

Case in point: The White House noted that the 2023 list price of the blood thinner Eliquis in the U.S. was $521 — nearly 1,000% more than its $45 price tag in Australia.

• "The Administration is committed to ensuring that drug companies make wealthy countries pay fairer rates for drugs and stop relying on Americans to subsidize the vast majority of global pharma research and development," White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Axios in an emailed statement.
• Eliquis' American list price in 2023 was $521, according to a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services fact sheet. Axios was unable to confirm the Australian price in 2023, though it cost $45 there in 2024, according to health policy firm KFF.

Reality check: Dr. William Padula, a health economist at the University of Southern California, told Axios that negotiating drug pricing to a 1,000% decrease would be an "uphill battle."

• "I don't have any mathematical explanation for that, other than we'd have to reconfigure our entire health system and infrastructure in order to operate more like other countries to get there," Padula said.

Earlier this month, the president insisted his trade war is raking in $17 trillion in tariff revenue.

Zoom in: Tariffs imposed on U.S. imports will shrink the size of the economy and reduce total federal deficits by $2.8 trillion over 10 years, according to a June Congressional Budget Office report.

• "We could just say it'll raise a gazillion dollars…these are such ridiculous numbers that they're just as meaningless as that," Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics at Pacific Research Institute, which champions free markets and individual responsibility, told Axios.
• He added that Trump's proposed numbers don't account for the costs of businesses raising prices and revising revenue outlooks over tariff fears.

The White House declined to explain how the president calculated $17 trillion in revenue, but noted that tariffs would eventually "amount to trillions of dollars in the coming years."

Trump also recently claimed that 300 million people died from drug use last year. 

• "What's illegal are ... the drugs that are being sent into our country, and the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs."
• About 340 million people live in the U.S., according to the Census.
• It's unclear if the president meant that 300 million Americans died from drugs last year, or if he was referring to global deaths, but either way, his math is considerably off.

By the numbers: Roughly 62 million people died worldwide in 2024, including approximately 80,000 Americans who died from a drug overdose, according to April data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• Desai told Axios that the president was "right" to be concerned about drug deaths.
• "Millions of Americans are affected each year by the scourge of deadly drugs taking their friends, community members, and loved ones far too soon," he said.
• The White House declined to provide Axios the data the president cited.

The bottom line: Some of Trump's sweeping boasts collapse under scrutiny, making it tricky for the public, business owners and world leaders to rely on the president's statements for accurate information.

Go deeper: Trump's Truth posts mix wild conspiracies with market-moving policies