Leaders in the dietary supplement industry speculate the coming four years could be filled with gains and losses, depending on Trump's administration

The dietary supplement industry faces no shortage of challenges from an incoming Trump administration, but the elevation of natural-health advocate Robert F Kennedy Jr. may mean supplements are viewed more favorably by the administration.

November 6, 2024

Former president Donald Trump’s return to the oval office offers risk and reward to the dietary supplement industry with the threat of tariffs and a possible cabinet post for former presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr., but trade association heads and insiders say brands will need to watch the transition from campaign rhetoric to administrative reality to know how significant the effects will be.

“Everything is in up in the air,” said United Natural Products Alliance President Loren Israelsen, describing the unprecedented nature of the transition as a president more eager than ever to break norms returns to office. “And when everything is up in the air, you have to figure out were you want you put your bucket to catch what's coming down.”

A chief concern for Israelsen and others is whether and when Trump might impose tariffs he made central to his economic program. The president-elect’s threats included a 60% across-the-board tariff on imports from China, a primary source of dietary supplement ingredients. Tariffs for other trading partners could also be part of the mix. Every industry could be impacted, but the U.S. supplement industry’s domestic supply of basics like letter vitamins is virtually nonexistent, and plants used in herbs and botanicals products are not commonly grown here. Without an alternative source. such tariffs would drive price increases that American consumers might be unwilling to bear, Israelsen explains. “When you have no plan B, you have to absorb it, and the math just that doesn't work out.”

At the Council for Responsible Nutrition, Executive Director Steve Mister says the threat of tariffs makes lessons of supply-chain agility learned during the pandemic important in a new way. However, the prospect of tariffs at this point is something that the industry should be “watching” rather than reacting to, Mister says. “It's hard to know what will happen on Jan. 20. A lot of things that Trump promised in ’16 didn't come to be, so I'm not sure that they (tariffs) will come to be in 2025.”

If tariffs begin to take shape, Mister explains, every industry will be looking for “carve outs” and he believes the supplement industry has a strong case. “We're going to have to be prepared to make arguments as to why supplements are unique and special.”

Israelsen notes that a tariff on nutrients would also impact livestock farmers, hitting producers with a “double whammy” when they in turn try to sell meat to international markets that may deploy their own tariffs. There may be multiple allies in the fight against tariffs, he says, but anything that impacts the price of food could have a huge sway in negotiating exemptions. “Not everybody buys patio furniture every year, but everybody eats every day.”

Len Monheit, executive director of the Global Prebiotic Association and CEO at the Industry Transparency Center, says the industry will know more over the next several weeks but should treat some level of tariff increases as a virtual certainty. “The past prioritization of it, and the lack of learning that no one wins trade wars, and the push for Americanization means that there will be tariffs,” Monheit says.

While the threat of tariffs does call out a need to build a domestic supply chain for ingredients, the requests for exemptions should still focus on the immense difficulties of repatriating production. Facility costs would be high, and the environmental issues are complex. “The lobby efforts to identify non-repatriable supply chains needs to start. like, yesterday,” Monheit says.

Even the growth of simple herbs could be a challenge, says Kyle Garner, president of the Better Being Co., home to such brands as Solaray and Zhou. “A lot of botanicals and TCM (traditional Chinese Medicine) raw ingredients don’t grow well here. It will be an interesting opportunity for U.S. growers to try to figure out. It’s just hard to imagine they could get it to scale.”

Monheit emphasized that tariffs on imported ingredients are only one piece of the equation. “It's more than tariffs. It's the impact on global trade,” Monheit says, explaining that trade restrictions beyond tariffs are a possibility from an unpredictable Trump administration and the ability to sell into lucrative markets could be threatened.

Some industry figures are already celebrating the elevated role of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Trump administration. Kennedy has been very vocal about his anti-vaccine stance and espouses natural health beliefs that align well with supplement industry values. Kennedy posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “FDA’s war on public health is about to end” and included vitamins and nutraceuticals in that alleged suppression.

Organic & Natural Health Association Executive Director Karen Howard says that Kennedy’s cultural notoriety should not dissuade the industry from engaging with him if he is granted a position in the administration. That engagement could include delving into the finer points of the Dietary Supplement Health Education Action, which by many accounts is showing its age at 30. “I do think that there is room for a different conversation than there ever has been,” Howard says, describing Kennedy as somebody who “isn’t beholden to pharma.” “If this is what we're going to be dealing with, are we're just going to sit back and watch it, or are we going to get in there and do something with it?”

Mister is more cautious about discussing Kennedy’s potential relationship with the industry, saying “Trump is transactional, and we don't know what transaction took place that got him to come on board the Trump campaign.” Israelsen offers a similar wait-and-see stance, noting that “vigorous opposition” from the food and pharmaceutical sectors may minimize whatever role Kennedy believes he is due. “This is all contingent on what was promised and what is delivered, and that we simply don't know.”

Monheit took a far different view of Kennedy’s potential role. The goal of an iconoclast like Kennedy may be to “gut the FDA,” Monheit says. That could take power away from pharmaceuticals—thereby validating supplements as a health solution—but it might also lead to less regulation of supplement companies. “The rogue actors that are on the fringes of our industry are going to be so bloody empowered that ultimately, credibility in our industry will take a nosedive.”

The industry has long watched administration transitions for changes in regulatory activity and tone. When Trump took office for the first time in 2017, some industry insiders anticipated less enforcement, but Ivan Wasserman, an attorney representing supplement companies on FDA and FTC matters, says it is typically difficult to note substantial change from one administration to the next. With Kennedy in the mix, however, Wasserman says he is not sure what to expect.

“I've been practicing in this space for 30 years. I’ve seen many changes in administrations and political parties, and historically, there may have been subtle differences in regulatory approaches at both the FDA and the FTC, but no major seismic shifts. This time with RFK, it feels like it could be different,” he says.

The day after the election was decided, few can detail strategies for positioning the supplement industry well with an incoming Trump administration. Israelsen predicts a coming transition that will be “asymmetric” to previous transitions, including Trump’s first term in 2017. The usual “revolving doors” of new names in old offices might not be the case; unpredictable mandates could be the norm. “We're at that moment right now, at the Big Bang, where we're trying to understand what the universe looks like,” Israelsen says.

Mister notes that the industry can assume a rightward shift as Republicans take control of the U.S. Senate and likely to retain the House of Representatives. That might open the prospects for industry wish list items like allowing purchases of supplements on health saving accounts. In the immediate aftermath of the election, he sees this as an “all bets are off” moment and advises companies to keep a close eye on the next several weeks. “Priorities are going to crystallize in a few weeks, at least to an extent, and you'll get out of the campaign rhetoric and into administration rhetoric.”

Howard also advises keeping a close eye on the transition but recommends a willingness to engage when the time comes. “Maybe it’s time to get your hands dirty,” she says. “Roll up your sleeves. Dig in and figure it out. Be creative. Figure out what the risks are. What’s viable? And if there is change that needs to be done, what is the prospect of that change?”

Rick Polito

Editor-in-chief, Nutrition Business Journal

As Nutrition Business Journal's editor-in-chief, Rick Polito writes about the trends, deals and developments in the natural nutrition industry, looking for the little companies coming up and the big money coming in. An award-winning journalist, Polito knows that facts and figures never give the complete context and that the story of this industry has always been about people.