In October 2020, India and South Africa petitioned the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend certain provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in order to nullify intellectual property (IP) protections for COVID-19 treatments, vaccines, and diagnostics on the premise that IP rights were potential barriers to research and development, public-private collaborations, and access to COVID-19 products…
Read MoreGlenn Hubbard’s new book, “The Wall and The Bridge: Fear and Opportunity in Disruption’s Wake,” is promoted as “an informed argument for an economic policy based on bridges of preparation and adaptation rather than walls of protection and exclusion.”
Read MoreThe Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity and over 30 organizations have written a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, urging him to oppose abuse of the Bayh-Dole Act's march-in provisions on the prostate cancer drug Xtandi…
Read MoreU.S. broadband networks are among the best in the world, but many Americans are still without adequate access. Low-income and rural communities lack the proper infrastructure needed for high-speed internet. Nearly a quarter of U.S. households do not have home internet.
Read MoreU.S. Representatives Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), and several of their Democratic colleagues have made an egregious request to the federal government to subvert the patent rights protecting the drug Xtandi, which is used to treat prostate cancer.
Read MorePrescription drug price-setting proposals keep coming up in Congress with the purported aim of lowering prescription drug prices and improving Medicare. In fact, the Biden administration’s Build Back Better Act (BBBA) contains such provisions, and some usually level-headed members of Congress have recently expressed openness to passing those drug price-setting provisions as a scaled-back, stand-alone bill. Yet all such proposals are selfishly shortsighted and ultimately lead to lower quality, fewer options, diminished health outcomes, and establish price controls that could exacerbate inflation or lead to shortages.
Read MoreThis week in Congress, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is holding hearings about the Build Back Better Act (BBBA), including a hearing on drug pricing, about which language has been inserted into the bill. The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity has written to members of the committee to express opposition to the drug pricing language, because it constitutes yet another attempt to import socialist drug pricing policies from foreign countries.
Read MoreImposing price controls on American manufacturers would stifle medical innovation, kill jobs, and have a particularly negative effect on the health of our country’s most at-risk patients. Medical innovation is especially important now during a pandemic, and price controls would pull the plug on long-term funding for life-saving medicine research. The plan being considered in Congress would increase manufacturer liability substantially, and thereby disincentivize the development of new cures and limit doctors’ treatment options. These policies hurt American patients.
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Over the years, socialist drug price control proposals have appeared under a variety of names, with the purported aim of lowering prescription drug prices and improving Medicare. Most recently, and similarly to HR 3, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others are again attempting disguise prescription drug price controls in the Build Back Better package to allow government the power to determine the price for lifesaving medicines.
Read MoreOn August 10, U.S. Representatives John Garamendi (D-California) and Dusty Johnson (R-South Dakota) introduced the “Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021” (H.R. 4996) (OSRA 2021) to modernize federal shipping laws and address supply chain disruptions in the United States involving ocean shipping.
Read MoreThe Lower Drug Costs Now Act (H.R. 3) is a dangerous piece of congressional legislation for lowering prescription drug prices and improving Medicare for seniors and families across the country.
Read MoreThe Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity has written a letter to members of the U.S. House of Representatives, urging them to protect intellectual property and oppose H.R. 2873, the “Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act through Promoting Competition Act of 2021,” which would aid and abet Federal Trade Commission attacks on American businesses and grant FTC Chair Lina Kahn unprecedented power for an unelected bureaucrat. The bill is sponsored by Rep. David Cicilline (D – Rhode Island) and cosponsored by Reps. Ken Buck (R – Colorado), Carolyn Maloney (D – New York), and Jerrold Nadler (D – New York), and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D – District of Columbia).
Read MoreLast year, 15 countries formed what is now the world’s largest trading bloc. The United States is not part of it. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) comprises Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Read MoreAnyone hoping that the Biden administration would pursue international trade policies to counter the protectionism of the Trump administration should be sorely disappointed…
Read MoreThe Cornyn-Blumenthal Bill would effectively empower the FTC to oversee American prescription drug innovation and development and grant them the ability to quash drug innovations. If passed, this legislation would come at the peril of American patients awaiting innovations to address their serious suffering from medical conditions and diseases that could otherwise be treated or cured.
Read MoreThe Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity and 70 organizations have written a letter to members of Congress, urging them to oppose H.R. 3.
Read MoreOn April 22, U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-MA), and Education and Labor Committee Chairman Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-VA) reintroduced H.R. 3, a terrible piece of legislation known as the “Lower Drug Costs Now Act,” which, for good reasons, failed to be passed into law in the last session of Congress.
Read MoreSeveral years ago, LG Chem, now LG Energy Solution, a subsidiary of a rival South Korean global conglomerate, accused SKI of stealing trade secrets from LG’s lithium-ion battery technology and then leveraging them to secure lucrative contracts with Ford and Volkswagen.
Read MoreIn a recent interview with the New York Times, Bill Gates articulated the importance of maintaining intellectual property protection in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read MoreIn the quest to attract investment from foreign and domestic corporations, the State of Georgia has become a home for Electric Vehicle-related manufacturing. In 2019, SK Innovation (SKI), an Electric Vehicle (EV) battery manufacturer and subsidiary of a South Korean global conglomerate, broke ground in the town of Commerce, Georgia, on a $1.67 billion manufacturing plant to produce batteries for Ford and Volkswagen, with a promise of creating 2,000 jobs.
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