Pharma Fights for China Deal Carve-Out Under COINS — SkimNews
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- Western pharmaceutical companies are urging the Trump administration to let them keep doing deals with Chinese companies for promising drug candidates, the Wall Street Journal reports.
- The lobbying push is a response to the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security Act (COINS), a 2025 law restricting U.S. investment in Chinese technology that requires the federal government to screen deals involving sensitive technology with certain countries.
- An industry trade group is lobbying the Treasury Department as it writes COINS implementing rules, seeking to keep pharma's ability to do deals in China intact.
- The Treasury Department has been reluctant so far to fully incorporate pharmaceuticals into the COINS screening regime.
Why it matters: Treasury's reluctance to bring pharma into COINS screening gives drugmakers a window — but the implementing rules aren't final. If Treasury ultimately writes pharmaceuticals into the regime, Western companies lose a pipeline for early-stage Chinese drug candidates, narrowing the cross-border deal flow the industry has come to rely on.
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