COPENHAGEN, May 16 (Reuters) - Denmark's business

minister said on Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump's

executive order which directs drugmakers to lower drug prices

would create uncertainty and challenges for Danish

pharmaceutical companies.

The wide-reaching order gives drugmakers price targets in

the next 30 days. The U.S. administration has said it will take

further action to lower prices if companies do not make

"significant progress" toward the goals.

"What Donald Trump has said about pharmaceuticals is just

another step in the wrong direction," Morten Bodskov told

reporters on Friday following a meeting with representatives

from the Danish life science and pharmaceutical industry.

"It creates more uncertainty, it creates new barriers to our

trade and it is in every way the wrong way to go," he added.

"We're talking about large globally dominant companies that

are of course challenged by what we hear from the U.S.

administration."

Bodskov said Trump's order had an impact on billion-dollar

investments made by the life science industry.

"Uncertainty is not good for those investments," he said.

Trump said on Monday that the U.S. government would impose

tariffs if the prices in the U.S. did not match those in other

countries and said he was seeking cuts of between 59% and 90%.

It was not immediately clear which companies and industry

organisations had been represented at the meeting with Bodskov.