With a second Donald Trump presidency comes a great deal of uncertainty. And with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's pushed false claims about vaccine safety, in the mix for several public health-related positions, life sciences and health care attorneys are bracing for a variety of outcomes and new regulatory leaders.

Life sciences industry attorneys who focus on pricing, products liability, mergers and acquisitions, and commercial litigation all expressed some degree of uncertainty on what the future under a Trump administration would look like. Litigators predicted general continuity in terms of work inflow; attorneys involved in mergers and acquisitions in the life sciences and health care industries, however, shared a general optimism regarding the transactional markets post-election and beyond.

“The campaign we have all just gone through has not been very focused on a lot of policy detail," said Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney life sciences industry group co-leader Jason Parish. "There’s a lot of ambiguity.”
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Attorneys across industry sectors have expressed optimism about a boom in dealwork accompanying Trump's return to the White House, and life sciences specialists share in that enthusiasm.

“M&A has been down in 2024. That’s not a secret. But I’m already receiving phone calls from companies looking to get back into the M&A market in a big way now that the elections results have been announced,” said Troutman Pepper Hamilton & Sanders health care and life sciences co-chair Deborah Spranger. “I got a call from a client looking to not only increase the volume of their M&A work but also increase the size of the deals they’re doing. … The demand for transactional work at firms across the country is going to increase significantly in 2025.”

Others are making similar predictions.

“There’s been a lot of capital on the sidelines that is ready to be deployed and particularly if there’s a little more certainty in terms of antitrust review … [and] on how the federal agencies will view the potential mergers and affiliations and the like,” said Morgan, Lewis & Bockius global health care industry team leader Howard Young. “Broadly speaking and assuming the cost of capital doesn’t go up … generally speaking we expect more robust dealflow.”

The incoming president's treatment of the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden's signature climate law, may also have an impact. The initiative provides $390 billion over 10 years in tax breaks, grants and subsidies for wind and solar power, electric vehicle battery production and other clean energy projects, and a partial or complete repeal could send investors in different directions.

“If the Trump administration is conservative or pulls back slightly on the Inflation Reduction Act, we could see potentially that the money on the sidelines may come back into play, including additional deals in assets, acquisitions, molecules, or pipeline aspects,” added Morgan Lewis pricing and commercial access attorney Stephen Forster.
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Steady Stream of Litigation

As far as litigation is concerned, life sciences and health care partners don’t expect any massive changes under a new administration, at least as far as workflow is concerned.

“We see a fairly consistent amount of litigation in the pharmaceutical space and … the election result isn’t going to drive change one way or the other,” said Troutman Pepper health sciences intellectual property leader Andrew Zappia. “The one thing that is pretty constant in the legal business is that changes in the regulatory environment, either way, usually leads to more work for lawyers. Changes in whatever political direction usually mean that clients have to react and need assistance.”

Yet litigation often revolves around regulation, and attorneys including Michael Hinckle, the managing partner of K&L Gates’ Research Triangle Park, remained very uncertain on how regulatory bodies, and by extension their policies, would change direction under Trump. That uncertainty is particularly sharp around the fate of the Food and Drug Administration.

“The big wild card is what role RFK Jr. is going to play and what is he going to add to the picture," Hinclke said. "The FDA commissioner as well is a wildcard … Trump, if anything, is unpredictable.”

Attorneys in the litigation space further honed in on a suspected focus on drug pricing under a new Trump administration, as well as Trump’s campaign promises of tariffs on foreign imports.

“Public opinion polling on drug pricing indicates it’s always near top of concerns for American voters. Every recent president and Congress have tried to do things to address the cost of prescription drugs,” Parish said. “The big X factor here … is tariffs, offshoring, supply issues, shortages with particular prescription drugs,” and specifically moving supply away from China, which were key highlights in the Trump campaign.

“We don’t know the breadth of that [effort] and how far it will reach,” Parish continued. “Twenty percent tax on everything coming into the United States? ... That would significantly impact the cost of prescription drugs. That counters the notion of addressing drug prices and making them lower. … There are conflicting priorities and there’s some ambiguity about which priorities are in control here.”