[CTC] Rep. Schakowsky || Next Time Could Be Worse: Why the US Needs Coherent Industrial Policy to...

[Arthur Stamoulis]

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2020/12/21/why-the-us-needs-coherent-industrial-policy <https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2020/12/21/why-the-us-needs-coherent-industrial-policy>

NEXT TIME COULD BE WORSE: WHY THE US NEEDS COHERENT INDUSTRIAL POLICY TO CONFRONT THE NEXT CRISIS, CHINA, AND INCOME INEQUALITY

By Rep. Jan Schakowsky
12/21/2020
 
Despite the Trump Administration’s best efforts, the United States is poised to emerge from the global COVID-19 pandemic, chastened and mourning the loss of more than 300,000 of our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. The pandemic has shown that the Wall Street-driven approach of the past 40 years has left America ill-prepared to respond to this crisis and exacerbated major weaknesses in every fixture of the country. Thus, as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office, it is time to consider a radical paradigm shift in our country’s policies that dictate decision-making for public health, access to medication, manufacturing, and trade. We must pursue a national industrial policy and embrace trade policies that prioritize American workers while acknowledging the interconnectedness of our global economy.

Recently on Twitter, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) hinted at criticism of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his government’s promising plan to distribute Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to Canadian citizens and those in developing countries. Specifically, Senator Cruz claimed that the United States’ failed monopoly-based pharmaceutical innovation model was the reason for the successful innovation.

His goals were twofold: first, to obscure from public view the complete and utter failure of the Trump Administration to secure more doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine for Americans. The second, more important objective was to carry water for the pharmaceutical industry’s tired refrain: that American patients must be either starved of cures or pay through the teeth in order to support big pharma’s “innovation infrastructure,” i.e., the trough from which the big brand US pharmaceutical industry feeds. 

As is often the case, many people took to Twitter to point out that Pfizer did not participate in the US Government’s Operation Warpspeed , that BioNTech – which developed the vaccine – is a German company, and that said vaccine was developed by children of Turkish immigrants.
Despite the colorful feedback from Twitter users, GOP-elected officials, (including but not limited to Senator Cruz,) continue to thank the White House for Operation Warp Speed. Republican Members of Congress and White House officials tout Operation Warpspeed’s role in the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, implicitly doubling down on the US’s shareholder-first approach to regulating prescription drug pricing. This approach is not popular: 63% of likely voters support allowing the government to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs, and 69% support a “price match” to make them the same cost as they are in other countries.

The rotten preference for protecting profits over patients is not new and extends to the highest levels of government: in October the Department of Justice (DOJ) took a soft-touch approach to finally holding the Sackler family accountable for their role in misleading American doctors, patients, and families about the dangers of opioids in order to maximize profits. That’s right, the Sacklers got to keep most of the profits from their addiction and death-profiteering.

At roughly the same time as the Trump DOJ was going easy on the Sacklers, the US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, was carrying big pharma’s water at meetings of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) Council at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Ambassador Lighthizer constantly opposed a proposal by South Africa and India that would create a waiver for all WTO members on the implementation, application, and enforcement of certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement concerning the “prevention, containment or treatment” of COVID-19. The waiver would remove all intellectual property barriers and allow more countries to locally manufacture diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines, thereby increasing timely global access. According to the South African and Indian government, an effective response to the global COVID-19 pandemic requires rapid access to information for vaccines, medicines, and diagnostics. The proponents argued that without such a waiver, many countries – especially developing countries – may face institutional and legal difficulties in the coming months’ fight against COVID-19. 

This waiver would enable developing countries to help themselves deal with the pandemic. Without it, they might not have access to COVID-19 vaccines for years, until as late as 2024. For this reason, my colleagues – Reps. Chuy Garcia, Angie Craig, Susan Davis, Lloyd Doggett, and Andy Levin – and I will be filing an amendment to the next spending bill we see, to prevent Ambassador Lighthizer from continuing this wrongheaded approach. Ambassador Lighthizer has proven himself incapable of considering input from Congress on this front, despite numerous overtures, and we are left with no other approach.

When asked why I support the TRIPS waiver proposal from India and South Africa, I am always presented with a false choice: you can either have safe and efficient disbursement of resources, including the vaccine, or you can promote and protect US jobs.

Such a choice operates exclusively under right wing economic assumptions. And it’s not unique to questions of public health. In the subcommittee I chair on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, with jurisdiction over consumer protection, auto safety, technology, and interstate commerce, we are often expected to fall victim to legislative extortion by industry. Either you deregulate this or that, or we lose to China in this or that race.

Make no mistake – I take the threat China poses to American values very seriously, but also know that cutting corners and sacrificing our values and citizens’ wellbeing in order to “compete” would mean that we lose either way. Making matters worse, the right-wing policies embraced by those who insist we must race to the bottom to compete with China mean that we compete less, domestically, and the jobs end up in China regardless.

So, you might ask, what are we to do?
First, we must adopt a trade policy that puts people first and the interests of wealthy US shareholders a distant second. Consider – less than one in five Americans own stock. We are long past the point where the Dow tells you much about anything other than what the top 1% of the wealthy in America have in their retirement portfolio.

At the same time, we must adopt a national industrial policy, one that will come for the first time since Jimmy Carter occupied the White House. In order to weather the next crisis – be it a pandemic, military conflict, or extreme weather – the US must ensure that it is not caught flat-footed once again.

As a first step, this means implementing domestic manufacturing requirements for most goods in the national stockpile.  Requirements that government agencies “Buy American” are opposed by only 12% of Americans and 56% support increased government purchasing of US-based goods and additional public money for R&D. If private enterprise is incapable of achieving this modest aim, we must then utilize the Defense Production Act to allow for public manufacture of critical goods like personal protective equipment (PPE), vaccines, therapeutics, and other critical supplies that everyday Americans rely on to maintain their quality of life.

To ensure that American industry is competing on quality, technology, and efficiency – rather than in a race to the bottom with its treatment of American workers – we should adopt wage boards and bargaining in the sectors that produce and maintain the national stockpile. This will remove the temptation to punish workers to reduce costs and compete with other firms, a temptation to which too many current American titans of industry succumb.

By adopting a national industrial policy backstopped by public manufacturing and pairing it with a just trade policy that prioritizes American workers and patients over corporate profits, we can ensure the growth of American wages and competitiveness. As we prepare to confront the next challenges of our time, whether they be climate change, military conflict, or another public health crisis, this forward movement is vital to our country’s recovery and growth.

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826




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