Kenvue Stock in Shambles as Trump & RFK Tag-Team Tylenol… Is Big Pharma’s “Trust Us” Era Over?

Kenvue shares are currently up (checks chart) 3% today, shaking off a little bit of yesterday’s fallout after Trump and his dream team of RFK Jr. and Mehmet Oz dragged America’s favorite hangover cure into the autism debate. The FDA and WHO quickly rushed in with their “nothing to see here, folks” routine, insisting there’s no actual link between acetaminophen and autism. Which, let’s be honest, is exactly what Big Pharma always says right before you find out the miracle pill they sold you is basically fentanyl in a Pez dispenser.

The math tells you all you need to know. Tylenol makes up 42% of Kenvue’s revenue. Without it, this Johnson & Johnson spinoff is just bandaids and mouthwash. So of course the company fired back hard: “safest option for pregnant women,” “endorsed by professionals,” “anyone suggesting otherwise is endangering lives.” But strip away the lab coats and the supposed “science” and it really just sounded like: Please, for the love of God, don’t make us try to pay the bills with denture adhesive and travel-sized mouthwash.

That said, the selloff didn’t start with Trump’s AI-looking press conferences yesterday. RFK Jr. has been pounding this Tylenol-autism drum for weeks, long enough that investors were already heading for the exits. By the time Trump doubled down on stage with his “dream team” (RFK and Dr. Oz, because apparently daytime TV now runs U.S. health policy), the damage was baked in. KVUE stock has tanked 20% over the past month, which tells you the Street isn’t dismissing this as some throwaway Facebook meme.

(Source: Business Insider)

And right on cue, Wall Street rolled out the janitor cart. Citi told clients there’s “limited judicial risk,” in other words: good luck suing the medicine cabinet your mom’s been restocking since the Clinton administration. Deutsche phoned it in with the old “creatures of habit” line (translation: customers will still grab Tylenol… the alternative is riding out a migraine with essential oils and a Facebook prayer chain). CFRA, though, actually dared to point out the obvious: this might blow up the fragile market share Tylenol clawed back after years of losing shelf space to cheaper generics.

That said, are we really going to keep blindly trusting Big Pharma over RFK on this one? Yes, RFK Jr. has been called every name under the sun and his voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard. But this is the same Big Pharma that gave us OxyContin as a “miracle pain reliever,” pushed Vioxx until it killed people, and spent decades pretending cigarettes were “doctor-recommended.” You don’t have to believe RFK is right to admit the industry’s track record looks like a rap sheet.

The stakes of this battle are huge… Tylenol isn’t a niche product, it’s the drug practically every pregnant woman is told is safe when literally nothing else is. If that trust wobbles, even a little, Kenvue doesn’t just take a PR hit… its entire business model shakes. The whole point of spinning Kenvue off from J&J was to unlock predictable, boring, consumer-health profits. Now their most boring, predictable product is the centerpiece of a political firestorm.

From my POV, today's 3% bounce is Wall Street telling itself, “This will blow over.” Maybe it will. Maybe when it’s all over, we’ll keep grabbing Tylenol off the shelf without thinking twice. Or maybe RFK and Trump will keep hammering this until consumer confidence cracks for real. Whether you love or hate RFK, you have to admit the man is spot on for a lot of stuff and usually has science to back him.

The real question isn’t whether acetaminophen technically “works.” It’s whether Big Pharma’s reassurances still carry any weight in 2025. Because if the only argument is “trust us, we’d never lie about our products,” Kenvue might want to stock up on Band-Aids… they’re gonna need them to try to patch up their stock price.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Johnson and Johnson and Meta as mentioned in the article.