Denmark halves its 2025 growth forecast, citing Novo Nordisk
Denmark cut its 2025 growth forecast to 1.4% from 3%, partly because Novo Nordisk's weight-loss drug sales in the US have slowed — a sign of how much competition and copycat products are reshaping the market.
Denmark's economy ministry on Friday cut the country's 2025 growth forecast to 1.4% from 3%, pointing in large part to weaker expectations for Novo Nordisk, the maker of the semaglutide drugs Ozempic and Wegovy [1]. Higher US tariffs and a statistical revision to past years also contributed to the downgrade [1].
The scale of the change is unusual for a wealthy European economy. Denmark's economy grew 3.7% last year, boosted heavily by pharmaceutical exports [1]. Now the ministry expects pharmaceuticals to add just 1.3 percentage points to goods export growth in 2025, down from 8.1 percentage points in 2024 [1]. Total goods export growth is projected to fall to 2.7% this year from 10.5% the year before [1].
The ministry was specific about why. Danish exports to the United States dropped sharply in early 2025 after a large spike in late 2024, which it attributed both to inventory build-up and to increased competition in the weight-loss drug market, where Novo Nordisk has lost market share [1]. Generic medicines are also squeezing the company's US sales opportunities, the ministry said [1].
"Growth in the first quarter of 2025 has also been weaker than previously expected. Together with the American tariff increases and downwardly adjusted expectations for the pharmaceutical industry, this has given rise to a significant downward adjustment of the estimate for GDP growth in 2025," the ministry said in a statement, as rendered by Google Translate [1]. A separate revision showed real GDP expanded less in 2021 through 2024 than previously calculated [1].
The Novo Nordisk picture
Two years ago, the weight-loss drug boom made Novo Nordisk Europe's most valuable company, overtaking luxury group LVMH [1]. Its shares have since fallen more than 10% in 2024 and more than 40% so far this year, as investors weigh competition from US rival Eli Lilly, slower overall market growth, and questions about the company's next-generation treatments [1].
Earnings have held up better than the share price. CNBC reported the drugmaker posted 67% year-on-year sales growth at constant exchange rates, at 19.53 billion Danish kroner (about $3.03 billion), in quarterly results published earlier in August [1]. In that release, Novo Nordisk said it would push harder into direct-to-consumer sales as it competes with compounded copycat versions of its drugs and responds to President Donald Trump's demands for lower US drug prices [1].
Tariffs remain a wild card. Europe's pharmaceutical sector has faced the threat of steep US tariffs this year, with Trump saying pharma tariffs could eventually reach up to 250%, though an EU-US trade deal has provided some certainty [1]. The Danish ministry still warned of a "significant degree of unpredictability linked to the U.S. administration's policy" [1].
Why it matters for patients
For people in the US taking or considering semaglutide, this is a read on market conditions, not on how well the medicine works. Nothing in the forecast speaks to safety or effectiveness.
What it does show is that the US market has changed fast. A government ministry is now attributing a national growth downgrade partly to Novo Nordisk losing share to competitors and facing pressure from cheaper alternatives [1]. That kind of competitive pressure is the backdrop to Novo's stated plan to expand direct-to-consumer sales and to the ongoing fight over compounded copies [1].
It also underlines that tariff policy and drug pricing politics now sit close together. If US tariffs on pharmaceuticals rise, manufacturers face new costs on imported products; the sources do not say how that would flow through to what American patients pay at the pharmacy, so that remains unknown [1].
What happens next
The ministry raised its 2026 Danish growth forecast to 2.1% from 1.4%, expecting higher private and public consumption [1]. It also said the Danish economy remains strong overall, with high employment and inflation expected to come in below 2% for the year [1]. Whether Novo Nordisk's US sales stabilize, and how tariff policy lands, are the open questions the ministry itself flagged [1].
Sources
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