TAPP Applauds Efforts to Hold Biden Administration Accountable on TRIPS Waiver

The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity applauds Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE) for requesting that the Biden administration give Congress “copies of all documents, memoranda, advisory legal opinions, notes from meetings, audio recordings, records (including telephone and electronic mail records), correspondence, or other communications” related to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver covering COVID-19 vaccines. 

Recall the TRIPS waiver: On June 17, encouraged by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, member states of the World Trade Organization (WTO) voted to remove intellectual property (IP) protections on COVID-19 vaccines.

This move stripped away the rights of American innovators, setting up the potential to harm doctors and patients alike. The waiver allows countries to steal American IP for their own use. Moreover, the TRIPS waiver is the opportunity of a lifetime for Chinese and Russian officials looking to overtake the U.S. in global technological supremacy.

The TRIPS waiver leaves American IP vulnerable for attack and theft from foreign governments. It grossly undermines American innovation and insults the creators that make our technological advances happen. Supporters of the waiver wrongly suggest that intellectual property is a barrier to technological innovation, when in reality it is one of innovation’s greatest catalysts. The TRIPS waiver sets a dangerous precedent, especially if and when we need innovations to be developed quickly the next time the world needs a cure.

Yet instead of changing course as it should, the Biden Administration is considering the terrible idea of expanding the TRIPS waiver to cover therapeutics and diagnostics—a wholesale IP giveaway for no good reason, especially given that the president has declared the pandemic to be over.

Thankfully, Rep. Smith is asking the right questions in his resolution.

The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity applauds Rep. Smith for his efforts to hold the Biden administration accountable for handing over American innovation to hostile foreign actors and for demanding rigorous justification for any potential expansion of the TRIPS waiver.