Trade & Channel Strategies 2025: Why Wholesalers Remain Pharma’s Backbone

In his presentation, “Mastering Global Trade, Tariffs, and More in a Changing World—Lessons for Pharmaceutical Supply Chains,” Thani Jambulingam, PhD, professor of food, pharma, and healthcare business at Saint Joseph’s University’s Erivan K. Haub School of Business, focused on separating perception from reality when it comes to the impact of tariffs on the pharmaceutical industry. While trade policy and tariffs have dominated headlines, he emphasized that a one-size-fits-all view of pharma supply chains can lead to flawed decision-making.

The central premise of his discussion was the need for product-level analysis. Pharmaceuticals encompass a wide range of product types—including generics, biosimilars, branded drugs, and advanced therapies such as cell and gene treatments—each with distinct supply-chain structures, regulatory considerations, and cost sensitivities. As a result, the effect of tariffs varies significantly depending on the product category, making holistic assessments both misleading and ineffective.

He noted that despite widespread discussion about escalating tariffs, the actual impact to date has been limited. In many cases, tariffs remain close to zero, creating a disconnect between public discourse and on-the-ground realities. The primary area of tangible change has been at the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) level, particularly for materials sourced from China, where tariffs have been proposed or implemented in the range of 7.5% to 25%. However, on the finished-goods side, Jambulingam pointed out that little has materially changed.

This imbalance has generated confusion across the industry, with companies struggling to determine how urgently they need to respond. Jambulingam’s goal was to clarify the current state of affairs, acknowledging the significant amount of “noise” surrounding trade policy while emphasizing that dramatic supply-chain shifts have largely not yet materialized.

Ultimately, his message was one of strategic focus and measured response: pharmaceutical manufacturers should resist reacting broadly to tariff headlines and instead evaluate risk, sourcing decisions, and mitigation strategies at the individual product level—where the real impact, if and when it comes, will be felt most acutely.

He also commented on how these pharma supply chain lessons can be applied in the future; why he believes wholesalers will remain indispensable despite pharma’s push into direct-to-patient sales; and much more.

A transcript of his conversation with PC can be found below.

PC: Last month, you wrote a piece for Pharma Commerce in which you described how pharma’s push into DTP sales is reshaping the front end of drug distribution, but wholesalers remain indispensable as the backbone of the industry’s regulated, specialty, and logistics infrastructure. Why do you believe that’s the case?

Jambulingam: There are thousands and thousands of products getting distributed. We are talking about a handful of products that are going through DTP program. And even there, the DTP program can take the prescription and ship the prescription, but somewhere, it has to be stored. Somewhere it has to have the cold chain in place.

Somebody has to keep all the regulatory requirements fulfilled. Somebody has to bill, somebody has to pay for it. All these, and then looking for supply changes and looking for other compliance requirements, somebody has to do it.

I don't think pharma companies by themselves have that capability to do that. We have a resource that has the capability of doing all this very effectively and efficiently. How can that be dispensed? I mean, how can we be without it? My point is that you might take a few functions out of the supply process. The rest of it has to be done, and who else can do it like the wholesalers?