Lobbyists for some of the world’s largest drug companies are parading a new pricing deal in the U.K. as a model the rest of Europe should emulate if it wants to keep drugmakers from bailing for America.

To President Donald Trump and the lobbyists’ delight, British officials agreed to spend 25 percent more on new medicines in exchange for three years of tariff relief on pharmaceutical exports to the U.S. The move comes as major drugmakers like AstraZeneca and Merck scrap projects in the U.K., and the Trump administration uses tariff threats to get pharma to raise prices on Europeans in order to cut them for Americans.

For Washington’s lobbyists, the deal reflects the new influence playbook, as Trump’s tariff threats force companies to negotiate directly with the White House. Industry leaders say the U.K. deal could serve as a template for how the EU and other major trade partners handle the Trump administration’s break from free market norms, and stay competitive.

“The U.K. is the canary in the coal mine,” said Stephen Farrelly, global head of pharma and health care at ING, a Dutch bank. “The pressure is rising on the EU to do something similar.”

Lobbyists for drug companies are pounding the point home. Dorothee Brakmann, general manager of Pharma Deutschland, Germany’s industry lobby, warned that if Germany did not pursue a similar path to the U.K., Trump’s tariffs presented a “real geopolitical risk.”

“The UK-US agreement is an important signal for Europe’s pharmaceutical landscape. …[It] reinforces the need to reassess how we can make our own reimbursement system more flexible, more innovation-friendly and more internationally competitive,” she wrote POLITICO in a statement.

Alex Schriver, senior vice president of public affairs at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the U.S. industry lobby for brand-name drugmakers, echoed the German pharma group’s call for similar country deals.

“The agreement establishes important first steps by the U.K. to pay its fair share for innovative medicines and directly benefits American patients by exempting medicines from tariffs. We encourage the Trump Administration to seek similar agreements with other nations,” Schriver said in a statement.

Henrik Jeimke-Karge, spokesperson for Verband Forschender Arzneimittelhersteller, another German pharmaceutical group, said that the lack of an EU agreement meant continued uncertainty for the region.

“The pharmaceutical industry in the U.K. has now gained planning security. Such an agreement is still pending for the EU. …The risk of customs duties remains high and uncertainty persists,” he said in a statement.

Trump has repeatedly blamed European pharmaceutical companies for higher U.S. drug prices, threatened a 100 percent tariff on pharmaceutical products and demanded drugmakers implement “most favored nation pricing,” which would bring U.S. prices in line with those paid in other wealthy nations.

The threats have triggered British and European drugmakers to bolster their defenses on K Street, Washington’s lobbying corridor. Lobbying spending from July to September from GSK, AstraZeneca, Novartis, NovoNordisk, and Genentech, a subsidiary of Roche, were the highest for the time period in at least a decade. Year-to-date spending from AstraZeneca, EMD Serono, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi are also at a 10-year high.

European drugmakers are also ramping up their hiring of outside lobbying firms. DLA Piper, Corcoran & Associates, and B Hall Strategies registered to lobby for Novartis this year, which hired no new outside firms last year. Lobbyists for Novartis now include Richard Burr, the former top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and Michael Corcoran, a prominent Republican lobbyist from Florida.

Alkermes and Novo Nordisk have hired Ballard Partners, a Trump-connected lobbying firm, and Genentech has hired lobbyists at Miller Strategies, including Jeff Miller, a long-time Republican strategist and Ashley Gunn, a former special assistant to Trump in his first term. GSK, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk, meanwhile, have all hired lobbyists at Checkmate Government Relations this year, including Fritz Vaughan, a Treasury official in the first Trump administration.

“Policy is not siloed from business strategy right now,” said Allison Parker-Lagoo, deputy of the North America health practice at APCO, a public and government relations firm that advises drug companies. “The geopolitical environment is just requiring that everyone really think critically about how they’re showing up in each market that they operate in.”

In exchange for tariff reprieve, five drugmakers, including AstraZeneca, EMD Serono and Novo Nordisk have cut deals with Trump to lower prices. The pharmaceutical industry has together announced more than $400 billion in commitments to U.S. manufacturing, research and development since January, according to ING, the Dutch bank, including a $50 billion commitment from Roche, $23 billion from Novartis, and $20 billion from Sanofi.

“Trump is demonstrating that he’s willing to go further than anyone else to achieve his goals…Most companies and industries are having a conversation saying, ‘Let’s bring some solutions to the table,’ as opposed to just sitting back and holding the line,” said one health care lobbyist granted anonymity to speak candidly about strategy.

“It’s a big shift, and you don’t want to be the last one to the dance,” the lobbyist added.

Concerns over Europe’s pharmaceutical competitiveness were mounting prior to Trump’s second term. E.U. spending on research and development grew on average 4.4 percent annually from 2010 to 2022, while U.S. spending grew by 5.5 percent and China by more than 20 percent, according to the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, the EU’s pharmaceutical trade group, which did not respond to request for comment. Last year, the U.S. saw $6.7 billion in pharmaceutical manufacturing investments from foreign companies, compared to $5.9 billion in Europe, according to estimates from fDi Markets, a database owned by the Financial Times.

Advocates for drug companies warned that the Trump administration’s pricing and tariff policies will accelerate the shift.

“It speaks to the reorienting of the global biopharmaceutical economy…For the first time, the U.S. government is getting involved in the pricing and access behaviors of other countries,” said Kirsten Axelsen, a senior policy adviser at DLA Piper, a law and lobbying firm.

“[Companies] are advocating…to avoid the types of policies that would really make it almost impossible to launch a drug in European countries.”