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(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said he plans to order a cut in US prescription drug costs to bring them in line with other countries, spurring a drop in pharmaceutical shares worldwide.

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Trump said drug prices will be cut by “59%, PLUS!” in a social media post on Monday.

Over the weekend, Trump vowed to sign an executive order in Washington to institute what he called a most-favored nation policy, mandating that Americans pay no more than people in countries that have the lowest price and promising a 30% to 80% cut in drug prices.

While he didn’t provide details on how the plan would be implemented, investors grappled with the potential implications for the world’s largest pharmaceutical market.

Shares in US drugmakers dropped before the official open on trading in New York, with Eli Lilly & Co., Pfizer Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Merck & Co. Inc. all down. European drugmakers including Novo Nordisk A/S, Sanofi SA and AstraZeneca Plc slid, missing out on a broader market rally, while in Asia, the pharmaceuticals subgroup in Japan’s Topix Index posted its biggest one-day loss since August.

A renewed push to lower drug prices may have an “enormous” impact on the sector’s revenues, said Stephen Barker, an equities analyst at Jefferies Japan Ltd.

That’s because Medicare, the US government-funded program that offers health insurance for people age 65 or older, and Medicaid, which covers low-income citizens, collectively account for about 40% of US drug sales, he said.

Few Details

Americans pay the most in the world for medicines, funneling billions of dollars a year into an industry that says it depends on the US money spigot to drive growth and the development of breakthrough therapies.

Trump doesn’t discount that theory, but said it meant that “the ‘suckers’ of America” ended up bearing those costs “for no reason whatsoever.”

He said he wants the US “pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the World.” Predicting that pharmaceutical prices could drop in the US, Trump also said prices would likely “rise throughout the World in order to equalize and, for the first time in many years, bring FAIRNESS TO AMERICA!”

The US government already negotiates prices for some of the highest-cost medicines used in Medicare health insurance under the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022 under former President Joe Biden, with more slated to be added every year. The first two rounds of drug price negotiations haven’t included physician-administered drugs, but the next round might.