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Trump Wants to Overhaul Drug Sales. A Company Tied to His Son Stands to Benefit
The family members of President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are poised to benefit from efforts to remake the pharmaceutical industry.
WASHINGTON—The country’s top drugmakers are set to meet in early December at the Four Seasons hotel in Georgetown with Donald Trump Jr. and senior Trump administration officials that regulate the pharmaceutical industry.
The host: BlinkRx, an online prescription drug delivery company that this year installed Trump Jr. as a board member. The summit will conclude with a dinner at the Executive Branch, the exclusive new club founded by Trump Jr. and his close friends, according to people with knowledge of the event and a copy of the invitation viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
BlinkRx stands to benefit from a shake-up of how patients buy drugs after President Trump urged pharmaceutical companies to sell their medicines directly to consumers. BlinkRx helps drugmakers do exactly that with a service that promises to set up direct-to-patient sales programs in as little as three weeks. TrumpRx, a new government website set to launch in early 2026, would funnel patients to direct-sale sites.
Donald Trump Jr. is a board member of BlinkRx, an online prescription drug delivery company.
The invitation to the “Future of Pharmaceuticals” summit prompted consternation among some drug-company representatives, who worried that the gathering signaled that the White House wants them to work with the little-known BlinkRx because of its ties to the president’s family, according to people familiar with the matter.
It is the latest example of the Trump administration’s policy priorities overlapping with the business dealings of the president and his family.
“BlinkRx is one of many companies in the marketplace that provide these kinds of services to manufacturers,” said Adam J. Fein, the president of Drug Channels Institute, a group that studies the pharmaceutical industry. “What is different is Trump’s son is on the board.”
Drew Hudson, a vice president of corporate affairs at BlinkRx, said “no company will be pitching any services” at the December event. And Trump Jr. said in a statement to the Journal that this article amounts to an “innuendo smear” and accused the paper of pursuing the story at the behest of pharmaceutical-industry advertisers.
BlinkRx, which put the president’s son on its board in February, said in an August news release that it can help drug companies set up their own direct-to-patient sales platforms in “as little as 21 days.” In addition to being on BlinkRx’s board, Trump Jr. became a partner with the investment firm 1789 Capital last November. The firm, which is co-hosting the December summit, led a $140 million funding round for BlinkRx in June 2024, according to a person familiar with the deal. A spokesman for 1789 Capital said the firm “maximizes transparency and compliance” and noted that “no one at the fund has ever worked in government.”
Chris Klomp, director of Medicare, described prescription-drug pricing last week at the White House.
Days before the president announced the new TrumpRx website, a BlinkRx representative told one drug company that BlinkRx could be involved with running the site on behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
In mid-September, as Trump was stepping up negotiations with pharmaceutical companies ahead of his TrumpRx announcement, BlinkRx invited the leaders of more than two-dozen pharmaceutical companies to Washington for the December “Future of Pharmaceuticals” summit.
The event schedule says there will be “small group” meetings with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary.
Invited companies include Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Amgen, according to a person familiar with the event, whose leaders have relationships with the administration. One person familiar with the December event said the summit is intended to bring together administration officials and pharmaceutical companies, but acknowledged “there is always a business angle.”
Hudson, the BlinkRx spokesman, said the company “is excited to help bring together leaders from biopharma, technology, and government to discuss how to improve patient access, American competitiveness, and life-sciences innovation.”
The White House said the administration isn’t interested in how pharmaceutical companies implement the changes the president is calling for, pushing back on the concern that BlinkRx has any favored status. “As long as drugmakers deliver cost savings for American patients through TrumpRx, how they do so is irrelevant,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.
Members of the Lutnick family at a Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund charitable event last year.
A White House aide said that the four officials named in the invitation haven’t confirmed their attendance at the December event. A Treasury Department spokeswoman said Bessent wouldn’t attend, citing a scheduling conflict.
Drugmakers now often work through middlemen called pharmacy-benefit managers so patients can fill their prescriptions at pharmacies. Several larger companies have established their own direct-to-consumer websites in recent years, meaning they might have no need for BlinkRx’s services. But smaller companies could look to firms such as BlinkRx to help establish such programs.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s adult children are also positioned to profit from the administration’s overhauls to the drug industry. Cantor Fitzgerald—the financial-services firm that was led by Lutnick until he joined the Trump administration—took a financial stake in a company that is trying to make money by investing in bringing pharmaceutical manufacturers to the U.S. Earlier this year, Lutnick handed his ownership of Cantor Fitzgerald to trusts benefiting his adult children, and his two eldest sons were named chairman and executive vice chairman of the firm.
A new special-purpose acquisition company called Drugs Made In America Acquisition II turned to Cantor Fitzgerald to handle its $500 million initial public offering, which occurred last month. The new blank-check company, the largest SPAC listing of 2025, will target “investments in strategic on-shoring of advanced domestic manufacturing technologies for critical drugs,” according to SEC filings, a mission that positions it to benefit from the expected onshoring resulting from pharmaceutical tariffs that Lutnick and Trump have threatened.
Some in the administration have grown concerned about Lutnick’s family taking financial stakes in issues the Commerce secretary oversees. Two White House officials said they felt that Lutnick should have raised Cantor’s involvement in the SPAC as he pushed for pharmaceutical tariffs in recent weeks.
A Commerce Department spokesman said that Lutnick has “fully complied with the terms of his ethics agreement with respect to divestiture and recusals and will continue to do so.” Danielle Popper, spokeswoman for Cantor, said the firm uses “rigorous compliance checks” and said “any suggestion we have acted improperly in regard with the transition of leadership and ownership is categorically false.” She said Cantor has no nonpublic information about the administration’s initiatives.
As part of the deal, Cantor agreed to purchase 500,000 shares of the SPAC for $5 million, according to SEC filings. Cantor will also receive 50,000 bonus shares once the company has completed a merger with a target company.
Desai, the White House spokesman, said that Lutnick “has been critical for the administration’s success delivering on President Trump’s pledge to level the playing field on global pharmaceutical drug prices.”
Write to Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com and Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com
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