Amgen, Merck stocks dive as Trump picks anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. to lead US healthcare

Pharmaceutical stocks are tripping over themselves to sell off on Friday after President-elect Donald Trump announced Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his choice to lead the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). Kennedy, who bears the name of his father who was assassinated on the campaign trail in 1968, is the most famous vaccine skeptic in the United States (as well as being from its most famous political family) and heavily distrusts the pharmaceutical industry, US agriculture and the processed foods industry.

Two members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Amgen (AMGN) and Merck (MRK), have both sold off more than 3% on Friday in light of the news. The general idea is that Kennedy might be able to obstruct approvals for new drugs, discontinue vaccines provided to US patients on Medicare and Medicaid, as well as promote a general distrust of drugs among the citizenry who are its end customers.

The Dow Jones sank 0.7% on Friday, which was much better than the S&P 500 (-1.4%) and the NASDAQ (-2.4%). 

Amgen, Merck stock news

Similar to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” tagline, which he revived from his first term for the recent election, Kennedy has been touting “Make America Healthy Again”. One of his major policies, which he has already begun to roll out in a campaign video, is to ban a number of additives and dyes found in US processed foods, which he blames for US obesity and declining life expectancy.

A longtime environmental lawyer, Kennedy holds a number of views that place him squarely in the conspiracy theory camp concerning US health. Besides blaming sexual dysphoria on herbicides, he wants to remove fluoride from public drinking water, blames 5G wi-fi for brain damage, and thinks the covid pandemic was engineered to sidestep certain Jewish and Chinese populations.

His most famous health interest is his decades-long campaign against childhood vaccines, which he blames for causing autism. Scientists overwhelmingly don’t believe this to be true, but Kennedy founded a nonprofit called Children’s Health Defense that has been influential across the US in pushing that notion.

As head of HHS, Kennedy vows to perform new testing on vaccines to find if there is a link between them and autism. HHS is in charge of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), which is part of the government apparatus that has the authority to approve vaccines and pharmaceuticals before they enter the market.

Additionally, as the government department that oversees the trillions of dollars that the US spends via Medicare (elderly patients) and Medicaid (those without access to private health insurance), Kennedy could have a role in reducing government funding of certain blockbuster drugs that he thinks might have been improperly approved. Kennedy has called pharmaceutical regulators “corrupt” on a number of occasions.

Amgen stock has already sold off this week after it came to light that its experimental weightloss drug MariTide might be causing patients to lose bone mineral density. This drug is Amgen’s attempt to compete with Novo Nordisk (NOVO) and Eli Lilly (LLY) in the exploding weightloss industry.

Amgen, Merck stock charts

Merck stock has broken through 2024 support at $112 and then 2023 support at $100. Now the market is rotating back toward 2022 levels where sell-offs were often halted in the $83 to $85 range.

MRK daily stock chart

Amgen stock has been cratering so hard in the past week that it already had fallen below support at $296. That price level was tested on multiple occasions this past summer. Now expect AMGN stock to move swiftly toward 2023 support near $260.

AMGN daily stock chart