CSL has urged the Trump administration to target hostile countries that could weaponise the supply of pharmaceuticals rather than place a blanket tariff on medicines as it lobbies for exemptions of duties of up to 200 per cent flagged by the White House in its expanding trade war.

The country’s largest pharmaceuticals manufacturer told US officials investigating the import of medicines that it understood President Donald Trump’s “concern that certain countries may ‘weaponise’ control over pharmaceutical supplies” and said this was the best reason for the government to focus its work on “specific non-allied countries”.