During his press conference on Wednesday, the US President-elect Donald Trump said US medicines are made overseas and are too expensive, and proper bidding could help lower the costs, provoking a selloff in big pharma and biotech stocks.

Sputnik: US big pharma suffered a major hit during Wednesday’s press conference of the President-elect Donald Trump, who blasted drugmakers for making their product overseas and subsequently importing it, and vowed to introduce proper bidding procedures in order to curb drug prices and “save billions.”

Biotech and drugmaker stocks slumped in the immediate aftermath of these remarks, reflecting the market perception of the big pharma as artificially overpriced. Pharmaceutical and biotech equities crashed on Wednesday after President-elect Donald Trump blasted the “big pharma” lobbying practices as artificially driving prices and supporting vicious foreign trade patterns.

“They’re getting away with murder,” Trump said. “Pharma has a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power and there is very little bidding. We’re the largest buyer of drugs in the world and yet we don’t bid properly and we’re going to save billions of dollars.”

The US government, Trump said, is paying much more for medicines than the open market price would be, therefore, transparent bidding is vital in order to counter the powerful pharma lobbies. Subsequently, the market sentiment shifted toward expectations of lower biotech and drug industry premiums down the road, resulting in a selloff in related stocks.

“Our drug industry has been disastrous, they’re leaving left and right,” Trump said. “They supply our drugs but they don”t make them here, to a large extent.” Obamacare, Trump said, must be repealed and replaced “essentially simultaneously.”

The iShares Nasdaq Biotech exchange-traded fund (ETF) plunged 4pc in its biggest one-day decline in three months. S&P Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology & Life Sciences Index dipped 1.7pc