Abbott Laboratories to invest $500M in manufacturing, add 200 jobs in Illinois
Abbott Laboratories is doubling down on local investment, as President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policy continues to cause hand-wringing over the global economy.
The company, whose offerings span from medical devices to pharmaceuticals, said during its first quarter earnings call Wednesday that it plans to invest $500 million in manufacturing and research and development in Illinois and Dallas.
The Illinois expansion will happen at the company’s headquarter campus in Abbott Park, according to company spokesperson Maddie King. The medical giant also has offices at Willis Tower.
Abbott plans for those investments to “go live” by the end of the year. It expects to hire about 200 people in Illinois and 100 in Dallas over the next few years to support the expansion, according to the company.
Abbott has 89 manufacturing sites around the world, with the highest concentration of sites, 35, in the U.S.
In the last five years, Abbott has invested nearly $5 billion in domestic manufacturing and equipment, plus another $10.7 billion in research and development.
Abbott Chairman and CEO Robert Ford said in the call that the investments are related to its U.S. transfusion diagnostics business, which is responsible for screening the U.S. blood supply.
King did not respond to questions about how Trump's shifting tariff policies relate to its U.S. expansion.
Last week, Trump ordered tariffs on China of 145%. He's also imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum; 25% tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada not subject to the U.S. free-trade agreement; 25% tariffs on auto imports, as well as parts, which kick in next month, and a 10% baseline tariff on nearly all imports. Trump is also exploring tariffs on medicine and pharmaceutical ingredients.
Tariffs are taxes put on goods that are imported from a foreign country. They’re often used by political leaders to signal their disdain for another country’s policies — or as a tool to promote domestic industries and production.
Ford said during the investor call that tariffs will affect all of its manufacturing sites across the world, but the company is "well positioned to implement mitigations to help manage the impact of the tariffs."
"We estimate the tariff impact in 2025 to be a few hundred million dollars. That's a half-year impact because I don't see any impact in Q2. And then we start to kind of see the impact happening in Q3," Ford said.
"One thing we have learned from tariffs is they don't go away. So whatever comes, it stays, and it stays for a while. I look at the tariffs that went in place in 2017. They're still there. So we need to think about how do you mitigate this more in a long-term sustainable way," he said. "So yes, you can use a balance sheet, and you can build some inventory — and we'll probably do some of that. But if your entire strategy is building inventory, you guess what's going to happen in 2026, or whenever that inventory runs out. So we're really looking at the manufacturing network and optimizing it."