MATT MOWERS: After NATO Summit, Europe’s Free Ride Is On The Line

For decades, European nations have benefited from American strength, innovation, and generosity, without paying their fair share or offering reciprocal treatment. They happily take our protection, our products, our technology, and our money and turn around and lecture us about democracy and the economy.

It’s a rigged game, and the American people are paying the price.

Europe slaps high tariffs and endless regulations on American products, from agriculture to cars, while flooding our market with subsidized European goods. Worse still, the EU is actively targeting American tech companies, not because they’re doing anything wrong, but simply because they’re American and successful. That’s not competition. It’s economic sabotage.

It doesn’t end there. European countries pay far less than what Americans pay for the exact same prescription drugs made by American companies, funded by American investment and tested under American standards. By arbitrarily setting the price of medicines, foreign government bureaucrats decide which medicines to cover and which to exclude. As a result, patients in other wealthy countries only have access to an average of 43% of new medicines, compared to 87% for patients in the United States. These policies don’t just harm foreign patients, they’re bad for Americans, who are forced to pick up the difference.

A new analysis found that 26% of U.S. drug prices go toward offsetting the costs that other countries avoid. It’s a silent tax on every American patient – and we’ve been paying it for years.