USMCA Is Good, but Future Trade Agreements Can Be Better

On January 16, after more than a year of negotiations with Canada and Mexico, the U.S. Senate passed the implementing bill for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which preserves and strengthens our economic ties with Mexico and Canada—our top two export markets—and guarantees that virtually all U.S. exports enter these markets tariff-free.

The USMCA has some positive elements:

·         It modernizes trade for the digital age.

·         It removes regulations and technical barriers to trade.

·         It creates customs efficiencies.

·         It updates agriculture trade standards.

·         It enables greater financial services trade.

·         It maintains critical market access.

·         It ensures fair competition.

·         It protects some intellectual property—e.g., copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets.

These are all great, and President Trump deserves credit for getting the agreement done.

However, the original USMCA struck last year contained some strong provisions on intellectual property protections for biologic medicines that do not appear in the final agreement. Why? Because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded their removal.

The deleted elements included a provision requiring at least ten years of data protections for biologic medicines, a provision requiring patents to be available for new uses of drugs, a provision requiring three years of data protections for clinical information submitted in connection with new uses of previously approved medicines, and a provision linking regulatory approval and patent status.

Speaker Pelosi’s action was based on the faulty premise that intellectual property protections would raise the price of medicines in the United States. In reality, eliminating these protections from the USMCA will do nothing to help American patients afford the medicines they need or to gain access to new treatments and cures.

Indeed, the removal of intellectual property protections for medicines is likely only to dissuade scientists and inventors from developing new cures for some of the most chronic diseases and thus deny patients the innovative treatments they have come to expect from our nation’s traditionally dominant medical sector.

Fortunately, Senators Tillis (R-NC), Burr (R-NC), and Young (R-IN) continue to fight for America’s innovation economy as exemplified by their recent letter to USTR urging the inclusion of sector-based fact sheets to highlight ongoing government-sanctioned trade barriers and price controls that hinder market access, as well as the assurance that the robust biologics provisions originally agreed to in USMCA, must be included in any future trade agreements.

We call on policymakers to stand alongside these Senators who champion American innovators and patients to ensure that any future bilateral or multilateral trade agreement, with any other country, include the type of intellectual property protections for medicines that Speaker Pelosi insisted be removed from the USMCA.