[CTC] Senior House Democrats urge Tai to support expanding TRIPS decision

Wed Feb 7 11:11:30 PST 2024

Senior House Democrats urge Tai to support expanding TRIPS decision
Inside US Trade, Hannah Monicken | February 7, 2024

Four senior House Democrats are urging the Biden administration to support expanding an intellectual property-related World Trade Organization decision for COVID-19 vaccines to cover tests and treatments, arguing such a move would help improve access to medicines for certain developing countries without hurting the U.S. pharmaceutical industry.

In a Feb. 5 letter <https://schakowsky.house.gov/media/press-releases/schakowsky-doggett-lead-colleagues-letter-supporting-trips-waivers-covid-19> to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Democratic Reps. Jan Schakowsky (IL), Lloyd Doggett (TX), Rosa DeLauro (CT) and Jesús Garcia (IL) said there was “no reason for continued U.S. inaction on this issue.”

“The lack of access to therapeutics and diagnostics is a key factor driving the transmission of COVID-19 in developing countries – transmission that drives the resurgence of new variants of COVID-19 that threaten not only the citizens of these countries but those of all nations, including our own, whose vaccines can be made obsolete if COVID-19 is allowed to run amok in other parts of the world,” they wrote. “COVID- 19 is a global crisis and requires continuing global coordination and solutions.”

WTO members during the 12th ministerial conference in June 2022 agreed to a decision under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to facilitate use of compulsory licensing for COVID-19 vaccine production. The decision included a commitment to decide within six months whether to expand the scope of the decision to cover therapeutics and diagnostics. Negotiators later pushed back the deadline but didn’t set a new one.

However, as of last week, the negotiators appeared poised to conclude the talks <https://insidetrade.com/node/179013> as members proved unable to find consensus on whether to expand the TRIPS decision, which is essentially a “no” vote at the WTO. While the U.S. never stated its positions on the issue explicitly, several other developed members were skeptical of or opposed to the move, including Switzerland, Japan, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

But the four lawmakers insisted it remains a relevant and necessary move.

“While that Decision does not remedy the vaccine access problem, it could significantly improve global access to affordable COVID treatments and tests if it were expanded to cover such medical products,” the letter says. “Thus, we support the proposal to extend the June 2022 WTO Decision on the TRIPS Agreement to also cover COVID treatments and tests. The October 17, 2023 publication of the U.S. International Trade Commission study on ‘COVID-19 Diagnostics and Therapeutics: Supply, Demand, and TRIPS Agreement Flexibilities’ makes it clear that there is no reason for continued U.S. inaction on this issue.”

The ITC report <https://insidetrade.com/node/178123>, released last October, did not make any recommendations on how the U.S. should proceed but found a continued “wide” disparity between developed and developing countries in access to COVID-19-related diagnostics and therapeutics – a challenge in which IP was one of several barriers. Both sides have claimed the report bolsters their arguments.

Schakowsky, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce innovation, data and commerce subcommittee, and Doggett, ranking member of the Ways & Means health subcommittee, led the letter. DeLauro is ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee.

The lawmakers argue that expanding the decision would not impact U.S. industry or jobs.

“[T]he proposed extension of the WTO Decision would only include sales in developing country markets that already have proved unable to afford brand-name treatments and tests of generics made only in developing countries,” they wrote. “Thus, it would not affect existing sales and profits of pharmaceutical companies or pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs in the United States.”

Other lawmakers – and a number of industry groups – have opposed expanding <https://insidetrade.com/node/178962> the decision, arguing it sets a bad precedent and could hurt U.S. pharmaceutical innovation. Civil society groups, meanwhile, have largely backed the push.  

Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, an advocacy group, last week blasted the WTO for likely wrapping up the talks without expanding the MC12 decision.

“Big Pharma’s unfathomable profit margins would have hardly budged under this modest proposal, but their CEOs and lobbyists did not want the precedent of another WTO decision shifting the needle even slightly away from their sacrosanct intellectual property rights and toward public health,” Global Trade Watch Director Melinda St. Louis said in a Jan. 31 statement <https://www.citizen.org/news/corporate-greed-and-rich-countries-cowardice-lead-wto-to-abandon-proposed-sharing-of-covid-treatment-technologies/>. “Yet, rich countries, including our own, were not brave enough to stand up to Big Pharma to save lives.”  -- Hannah Monicken (hmonicken at iwpnews.com <mailto:hmonicken at iwpnews.com>)

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826

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