Tokyo Stocks Fall As Drugmakers Hit By Trump Comments

TOKYO, , (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Jan, 2017 ) - Tokyo stocks fell Thursday morning as drugmakers were hit by US President-elect Donald Trump's warning they were "getting away with murder" in overcharging and sending production capacity overseas.

Japan's top drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical dropped 2.61 percent to 4,840 Yen while rival Astellas was down 3.89 percent at 1,605 yen. The drop followed similar losses for their counterparts on Wall Street as Trump vowed to rein in the industry by creating new procedures for bidding on drugs to bring down high prices.

Pharmaceutical companies will be coming back to the United States from overseas, he added. "Our drug industry has been disastrous.

They're leaving left and right. They supply our drugs but they don't make them here, to a large extent," Trump said in his first formal post-election news briefing Wednesday.

However, the conference offered few details about his plans for the world's top economy beyond saying he would be "the greatest jobs producer that God ever created". Trump's November election win had stirred hopes for big stimulus spending and set off a global equity market rally.

"The market did have some hopes that Trump would give more details about his policies. The yen's moves reflect the disappointment," Masakuni Fujiwara, chief executive officer at VistaMax Fund Advisors in Tokyo, told Bloomberg News.