European healthcare drops as Trump says tariffs on sector coming soon

Shares in European healthcare companies fall after U.S. President Donald Trump said tariffs for the sector would be announced soon

Europe's benchmark STOXX 600 Healthcare index .SXDP falls 4.5%, leading sectoral losses on the broader STOXX 600 .STOXX that falls 3.1%

"It was pharma that was outperforming actually after it became clear that in the first step it was exempted from the tariffs. And now it's getting into focus," an analyst who asked not to be named says

The analyst notes all tariff decisions seem to be pretty short-term, as one week ago pharma was exempted and now it's in the focus; "Nobody knows what Trump will think about that in two or three days time, so it's really extremely difficult to predict"

Among single stocks, Switzerland's Roche ROG.S and Novartis NOVN.S and fall 5.5% and 6.3%, respectively

France's Sanofi SASY.PA drops 5.1%, Valneva VLS.PA is down 4.2%

Belgium's Argenx ARGX.BR and UCB UCB.BR are down between 4.4% and 7.1%

Germany's Bayer BAYGn.DE and Merck MRCG.DE fall 3% and 3.2%, respectively

Bavarian Nordic BAVA.CO, GSK GSK.L and AstraZeneca AZN.L are down 2.8% to 5.3%