WASHINGTON (AP) — On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an important order. It gives drug companies 30 days to lower the price of medicines in the U.S. by choice. If they don't, the government will set new limits on how much it will pay later.

The order asks the health department, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to negotiate new prices for drugs over the next month. If they can't agree on prices, Kennedy will need to make a new rule. This rule will connect the price the U.S. pays for medicines to the lower prices paid by other countries.

"We will make things equal," Trump said at a press conference on Monday morning. "Everyone will pay the same. We will pay the same amount as Europe."

It's not clear if the president's order will affect the millions of Americans who have private health insurance.

Just hours after the Republican-controlled House shared its new plan to cut $880 billion from Medicaid, Trump talked about possible savings on drug prices, but it was not clear how this would happen.

The group representing the main US drug companies quickly spoke out against Trump's order, saying it was not good for American patients. Drug companies have often said that if their profits are threatened, it could harm their research to find new medicines.

Stephen J. Ubl, the head of PhRMA, said that using prices from socialist countries would be bad for Americans. He said it would mean fewer new medicines and could hurt the large amount of money companies plan to invest in the US.

Trump's plan for Medicare drug prices, known as 'most favored nation,' has been debated since he first proposed it. Near the end of his time as president, he signed an order saying the U.S. should pay less for certain drugs, like those given by shot or IV for cancer, paying only the same low price that other countries pay.

A specific order from the president had problems because a court stopped the rule from starting when President Joe Biden was in charge. Medicine companies said that Trump's plan from 2020 would give other countries an advantage in deciding how much medicines cost in the U.S.

On Monday at the White House, during a long speech, Trump often supported drug companies. He said that other countries were responsible for the high cost of medicines in America. The president was with several important people, like Kennedy, Dr. Mehmet Oz from Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Marty Makary from the Food and Drug Administration, and Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health.

However, he warned the companies that he would investigate their actions and let more medicines from other countries be sold in the U.S.

Trump said that drug companies earn most of their money from the United States, adding that it is not a positive situation.

Trump talked a lot about the announcement over the weekend, saying in one post that his plan could save "TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS."

But on Monday, the White House did not say exactly how much money they expected to save.

According to Oz on Monday, the health department's leaders will meet with drug company leaders in the next month. They will talk about new prices for medicines, which will be based on what other countries pay.

Rachel Sachs, a health law expert, said Americans probably won't see lower drug prices soon because of the order.

"It seems the plan is to ask companies to lower their prices on their own, but we don't know the exact price they should reach," Sachs said. "If they don't lower prices enough, the health department will do other things over a long time. Some of these actions might lower drug prices later, perhaps many years from now."

The health department has the most power to change the prices of medicines covered by Medicare and Medicaid because it can make rules. But its power is limited. In 2022, Congress passed a new law. This law lets Medicare negotiate lower prices for a small number of prescription drugs starting in 2026. Before this law, Medicare paid whatever the drug companies asked for. Drug companies tried to stop the law by going to court, but they lost.

It's even harder for the agency to control the price of drugs that millions of Americans with private insurance pay.

The U.S. regularly spends more money on medicine than other large and rich countries. This makes both main political parties angry, but they have never found a permanent solution that Congress has approved.

When Trump became president, he said drug companies were doing very bad things and getting away with it. He also said that other countries, where the government sets the price of medicine, were taking advantage of people in America.

Before the announcement, Trump strongly criticized drug companies on social media again. He wrote that for years, these companies said high prices were because of research and development costs. He added that only Americans paid these costs, calling them "suckers."

He said that the money drug companies give to political campaigns "can do a lot of good, but not with me or the Republican Party." He was talking about how drug companies try hard to influence politicians.

"We are committed to acting in a manner that is ethically sound," he asserted.

Several drug companies saw their stock prices go up on Monday morning. For example, Merck, a company that made a lot of money last year with its cancer treatment Keytruda, went up by 3.9%. Another large drug company, Pfizer, which also made a lot of money, increased by 2.5%, and Gilead Sciences went up by 5.8%.