Family members of President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are set to profit as the U.S. government steps up its efforts to lower drug prices and boost the local production of pharmaceuticals, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The Journal said that BlinkRx, an online prescription drug delivery company whose board members include President’s son Donald Trump Jr., would become a major beneficiary as the White House pushes for direct-to-consumer drug sales.
Last month, Trump announced the launch of a DTC platform called TrumpRx, through which Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) has agreed to sell four of its prescription medicines at sharp discounts to cash-paying consumers.
The president added that more drugmakers are set to join the initiative, which comes under his most-favored-nation (MFN) pricing policy he revived in May, requiring pharmaceutical companies to lower their U.S. drug prices in line with those in other developed nations.
In mid-September, BlinkRx reportedly invited over two dozen pharma companies to a major event scheduled for early December at the Four Seasons hotel in Georgetown, while the White House was intensifying its negotiations with drugmakers in the lead-up to the announcement.
The event, titled Future of Pharmaceuticals Summit, hosted by BlinkRx, is set to include meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and senior government officials who oversee the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Invitees included Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY), and Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN).
According to people familiar with the matter, some drug company executives are concerned that the event implied the Trump administration’s efforts to encourage drugmakers to work with BlinkRx owing to its ties to the Trump family.
In a statement, Drew Hudson, vice president of corporate affairs at BlinkRx, said that “no company will be pitching any services” at the summit, while Trump Jr. added that the Journal’s article amounts to an “innuendo smear.”
Additionally, days before the TrumpRx announcement, a representative for BlinkRx told a drug firm that the company, which added the president’s son to its board in February, will be involved in running the site as an agent for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
According to the paper, Commerce Secretary Lutnick’s family members are also expected to benefit from a new blank-check company targeting the domestic production of critical pharmaceuticals, a major rallying cry for the Trump administration.
Cantor Fitzgerald, led by Lutnick until he joined the Trump administration, was involved in the initial public offering of a special-purpose acquisition company called Drugs Made In America Acquisition II (NASDAQ:DMII) last month.
Under the deal, the SPAC, focused on “investments in strategic onshoring of advanced domestic manufacturing technologies for critical drugs,” has agreed to offer 500K shares for $5M to Cantor, where Lutnick’s eldest sons serve as chairman and executive vice chairman.
Cantor is also set to receive 500K additional shares when the company, which made its public debut last month as the largest SPAC listing of 2025, completes a merger with a target.
Lutnick has “fully complied with the terms of his ethics agreement with respect to divestiture and recusals and will continue to do so,” the WSJ reported, quoting a Commerce Department spokesman. Danielle Popper, spokeswoman for Cantor, added that her firm uses “rigorous compliance checks,” and added that it was only the underwriter of the SPAC, not the sponsor.
“Any suggestion we have acted improperly in regard with the transition of leadership and ownership is categorically false,” she noted.
Dear readers: We recognize that politics often intersect with the financial news of the day, so we invite you to click here to join the separate political discussion.