Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s has the pharmaceutical industry running scared now that he looks poised to play a senior role in the next Trump administration.
Adapting his possible future boss’ signature slogan as his own, RFK Jr. has promised to Make America Healthy Again, but one senior executive from the healthcare sector told the Financial Times his influence on policy would be “awful on a lot of levels”.
During Wednesday’s victory party, Trump took to the stage to thank supporters like Elon Musk and RFK Jr., who initially sought to contest Biden’s Democratic nomination before ultimately backing out to endorse his Republican challenger after the Democrats pivoted to Kamala Harris in July.
“He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him go do it,” said Trump, speaking of RFK Jr., only imposing the requirement that he shouldn’t touch the oil and gas industry, a supplier of important feedstocks for the chemicals industry. “Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby.”
The Kennedy family scion has touted his muscular physique at the age of 70 as evidence of a healthy lifestyle that steers clear of the harmful chemicals widely employed as additives and preservatives in popular foods found on supermarket shelves.
One of them, Yellow Dye No. 5, originally was a coal-tar color that emerged as a byproduct left over after turning coal into metallurgical coke for blast furnaces. Now it is made from petroleum and can be produced more cheaply than natural food colorings.
“That’s just one of at least 100 chemical poisons that our health agencies allow into our children’s food,” RFK Jr. said in late September.
He has criticized the cycle of western diseases brought on by a combination of ultra-processed foods and sedentary lifestyle, which are then treated profitably by the pharmaceutical industry. These illnesses including everything from morbid obesity and diabetes to asthma and early onset colorectal cancer.
Banning additives like synthetic dyes would result in more Americans losing weight and feeling healthier with fewer instances of cancer, he has argued.
‘Eventually Trump will sour on him’
But RFK Jr. has also attracted criticism over his vaccine skepticism and his support for some of the trendy anti-science foods popular among the alt-right, such as raw, unpasteurized milk, which can contain harmful bacteria. This week he promised to eliminate cavity-fighting fluoride from drinking water.
“We need to have somebody who is going to be grounded by science and evidence and not somebody who rejects it,” John Maraganore, former chief executive of Boston biotech firm Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, told the FT.
It’s hard to say what precise role he will play as often or whether Trump would allow him to implement his policies. While president, Trump generally pushed an agenda of deregulation, which could run counter to RFK Jr.’s agenda—for example, by eliminating sanitary requirements in industrial food processing.
“I don’t have a post for myself that’s picked out. I know that I’m going to be deeply involved in helping to choose the people who can run the FDA, NIH and CDC in a way that restores public health,” RFK Jr. said in September, referring to the Food and Drug Administration, National Institute for Health and Center for Disease Control.
This week he claimed he was promised a prominent position, although a senior Trump official denied this would be a cabinet post as Secretary for Health and Human Services. Fortune reached out to the campaign for clarification, but has not yet received a response.
Even if he initially gets an influential post, he might not be there very long. The President-elect also earned a reputation for quickly swapping officials out, firing his first secretary of state by tweet after just one year and setting a record for turnover in his administration. So there’s little guarantee RFK Jr. will have any lasting impact now that he’s fulfilled his job helping the notoriously transactional former president get elected.
“RFK is going to blow up,” one person close to the first Trump administration told the FT. “He’s marching around saying what he wants the administration to do before Trump’s had a chance to take a breath. Eventually Trump will sour on him.”
A newsletter for the boldest, brightest leaders:
CEO Daily is your weekday morning dossier on the news, trends, and chatter business leaders need to know.
Sign up here.
