By Patrick Wingrove

Feb 26 (Reuters) - Eli Lilly LLY.N plans to spend at least $27 billion to build four new manufacturing plants in the U.S., the drugmaker said at a Washington press conference on Wednesday, as it grapples with the threat of drug import duties from the Trump administration.

The new plants will be built over the next five years, and are expected to create more than 3,000 jobs for skilled workers like engineers and scientists as well as 10,000 construction jobs, the company said.

Lilly said it will announce the locations of the sites later this year.

The announcement comes less than a week after U.S. President Donald Trump met with chief executives from major drugmakers, including Lilly CEO David Ricks, to discuss industry concerns such as tariffs on drug imports.

Trump, who campaigned on a promise to boost domestic manufacturing, has been piling pressure on drugmakers since taking office to move medicine production to the U.S. He suggested last week that he could impose a 25% duty on pharmaceutical and other imports.

Other sectors are also making manufacturing announcements. Earlier this week, Apple said it would spend $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, but analysts said some of that included current commitments.

The U.S. and its major trading partners have agreed to reciprocal tariff elimination for pharmaceutical products and chemicals used in drug production for the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Trade Representative's office.

Despite telling Republicans in a White House meeting earlier this month that he was considering such an exemption, Reuters reported, Trump has yet to rule them out.

Ricks said in a statement that Lilly's new investment plans would help reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing, and that tax-cutting legislation introduced in Trump's first term has been foundational to the drugmaker's domestic manufacturing investments.

Lilly, which has become the world's most valuable healthcare company worth more than $855 billion, said it has already committed $23 billion to boosting its U.S. manufacturing footprint since 2020. Its Wednesday announcement brings that total to more than $50 billion.

Three of Lilly's new plants will be used to manufacture pharmaceutical raw ingredients, while the fourth will make injectable medicines, the drugmaker said.

(Reporting by Patrick Wingrove in New YorkEditing by Bill Berkrot)

((Patrick.Wingrove@thomsonreuters.com;))