Lilly promises to make weight-loss pill in United States in reshoring push

Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. plans to manufacture its new weight-loss pill—if it’s approved—in the United States for patients around the world as President Donald Trump presses companies to move production back to American shores.

“We’re going to make this medicine here in the United States,” CEO Dave Ricks said Friday in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. “We’ll be proud to make this medicine at that site and ship it around the world from our country.”

Weight-loss drugs that can be taken by mouth rather than injected are seen as the next frontier in obesity—a market expected to reach $130 billion by the end of the decade. Lilly is in the lead with its pill, called orforglipron, which helped patients shed weight and control blood sugar as well as Ozempic, according to results released Thursday.

Lilly shares jumped 14% on the news Thursday.

By making its pill in the U.S., Lilly may be able to avoid the impact of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, including potential levies on pharmaceutical products. Lilly had already announced in February that it would spend at least $27 billion to build four new domestic manufacturing plants.

The pill still needs to be submitted to U.S. regulators for review and approval, meaning it likely won’t reach patients until at least 2026, the company has said. But Lilly is already preparing for what it expects to be a wildly popular treatment.

Analysts expect the drug to eventually exceed $10 billion in annual sales if fully approved.

“We’re building inventory so that when we introduce this product in 2026, we can do it globally, in all countries simultaneously, virtually, and at scale without the risk of shortage,” Ricks told Fox in the interview. “We’ll be ready.”

Lilly is studying orforglipron and its other medicines, a class of drugs called incretins, in range of conditions related to metabolic health. Ricks said that maintaining a healthy weight is one of the most important factors in preventing chronic disease, echoing a key part of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

“We want to work with the administration and others who want to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ and get these medicines to more patients,” he said.

But the Trump administration has not widely supported use of weight-loss drugs like the ones made by Lilly and rival Novo Nordisk A/S. It recently spiked a Biden-era plan to pay for obesity drugs for patients on Medicare, which does not currently cover them. The move, which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it may reconsider in the future, would have given millions of older adults on the government insurance program access to the costly medicines.

“We’d like to work with the administration to change that,” Ricks said. “I think that’s one of the most important things that could be done to make America healthy. And it’s an invention from an American company, made here in America. What could be better?”