Math Has Never Been Trump’s Thing

Trump’s prescription drug plan could save billions; if only numbers would cooperate, percentages stayed realistic, and the President stopped treating arithmetic like a suggestion rather than a rule.

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I’ve spent enough time watching Donald Trump interact with a balance sheet to say this without hesitation: math has never been his thing. Numbers, to Trump, aren’t facts or constraints; they’re stage props. They’re adjectives with dollar signs, inflated for effect, untethered from meaning, existing solely to sound enormous rather than be true.

Which brings us to his latest rhetorical masterpiece: prescription drug prices reduced by 1,200 percent. Or 2,000 percent. Or my personal favorite, 3,000 percent. Sometimes in the same week. Sometimes in the same speech. Sometimes in the same paragraph, like a man trying to win The Price Is Right by shouting every number he can think of.

Now here’s the problem: because buried beneath this numerological improv routine is actually a good policy. A policy that, if explained properly, could help millions of Americans afford life-saving medications without selling a kidney on eBay. And yet, instead of letting it speak for itself, Trump is once again setting the whole thing on fire with his mouth.

Let’s start with what was actually announced.

President Trump recently unveiled agreements with nine major pharmaceutical companies, including Amgen and Merck, under his revived Most Favored Nation (MFN) strategy. The idea is simple and, frankly, overdue: U.S. Medicaid programs will now be able to buy drugs at the lowest prices those companies charge in other developed countries. No more Americans subsidizing cheaper meds in Europe while paying triple at home. New drugs are included, too. Prices kick in starting early 2026 through the shiny new government portal, obviously named TrumpRX.gov.

The goal? Billions in savings for state Medicaid programs. Real money. Real relief. Real impact.

So far, so good. Right?

But then Trump steps up to the microphone and declares that drug prices are going to be cut by 3,000 percent. And that’s where the wheels come off the bus, roll into traffic, and sue the city for potholes.

Here’s a quick refresher for anyone in the White House orbit who skipped basic fifth-grade math:
You cannot reduce something by more than 100 percent.

A 100 percent reduction means the price goes to zero.
A 200 percent reduction means… the company would owe you money.
A 3,000 percent reduction means Pfizer is cutting you a check, throwing in a gift basket, asking if you’d like gas money for the drive home, and funding your retirement account.

Let’s make this painfully simple. Someone has to:

Say a drug costs $100.
– A 50% cut makes it $50.
– A 100% cut makes it $0.
– A 300% cut means the company pays you $200 to take the drug.
– A 3,000% cut means they owe you $2,900 every time you fill the prescription.

At that point, CVS becomes a hedge fund, and insulin turns into a side hustle.

This is not “aggressive negotiating.” This is mathematical malpractice.

And before the MAGA mathletes start hyperventilating, no: those numbers are not in the official fact sheets released on December 19, 2025. The actual documents talk about large percentage decreases compared to previous U.S. prices, aligned with lower global rates. Sensible. Defensible. Winnable.

But Trump, as always, can’t resist inflating the balloon until it pops. He’s done this before: claiming drug prices rose 1,000 to 5,000 percent under prior administrations, or promising 400–600 percent reductions. These figures don’t clarify the policy; they undermine it. They hand critics an easy out. They let Big Pharma lobbyists smirk while fact-checkers sharpen their knives.

And here’s the real question that should keep every adult in the room awake at night:
Why is no one correcting him?

Where are the policy aides? The economists? The communications team? The one intern with a calculator app? Is everyone so afraid of being the next person escorted out of the building with a banker’s box that they just nod and let him turn arithmetic into performance art?

Because the MFN policy doesn’t need exaggeration. It’s already a political winner. Americans understand the injustice of paying more than other countries for the same drugs. They understand “lowest global price.” They understand savings. What they don’t understand—and shouldn’t have to—is why the President keeps insisting on numbers that would require pharmaceutical companies to operate like slot machines.

Trump loves to say foreign countries are “free-riding” on American innovation. Fine. Make that argument. But don’t drown it in numerically impossible nonsense that turns a serious reform into a late-night monologue joke.

This is the tragedy of Trump in a nutshell: he stumbles into a policy that actually helps people, and then sabotages it by refusing to respect reality. Not political reality. Mathematical reality.

So let me be clear: you can’t negotiate with physics.
You can’t bully percentages.
And no matter how loudly you say “3,000 percent,” the numbers still don’t care.

Math isn’t woke.
Math isn’t partisan.
Math just is.

And until someone in the White House is brave enough to explain basic arithmetic to the President, even his best ideas will collapse under the weight of exaggeration. His real problem here isn’t bad policy; it’s that arithmetic refuses to lie for him.

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