TAPP Applauds Bipartisan Group of Senators Holding USTR Accountable
United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai recently announced that a “compromise outcome” was reached with the European Union, South Africa, and India on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver related to COVID-19 vaccines. The agreement on TRIPS protects intellectual property for COVID-19 treatments, vaccines, and diagnostics. The USTR’s action negates intellectual property rights.
The so-called compromise was made before informing Congress on the specifics of the text, violating the Transparency Principles USTR established in 2021. USTR Tai has gone rogue and totally disregarded her obligation to provide Congress all texts for trade proposals at the World Trade Organization. The guidelines are clear: “consultation and engagement is vital to ensuring that trade policy reflects American interests and American values.”
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Let’s Make It an Educational and Inspiring World IP Day!
April 26 is World Intellectual Property Day. Started in 2000, World IP Day offers an opportunity to join with people around the world to consider how intellectual property (IP) enables and enlivens the innovation and creativity that drives human progress. World IP Day highlights the role that IP rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity…
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TRIPS Waiver Petition Must Be Rejected to Protect American IP Rights
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…
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Book Review: The Wall and The Bridge
Glenn 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.”
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Coalition of 30+ Organizations Urges Feds to Oppose Abuse of Bayh-Dole March-In on Prostate Cancer Drug
The 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…
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Increasing Rural Broadband Access Will Grow America’s International Trade Presence
U.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.
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Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity Denounces Request for the Feds to Assert “March-In” Authority to Circumvent Prostate Cancer Drug Xtandi Patent Rights
U.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.
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Drug price setting is selfishly shortsighted
Prescription 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.
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Congress: Oppose Build Back Better Act's Drug Pricing Plan
This 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.
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Dear Members of Congress: Say NO to Socialist Drug Price Controls
Imposing 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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No Matter How It’s Gussied Up, a Drug Price Control Pig Is Still a Price Control Pig
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.
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The Ocean Shipping Reform Act Should Be Passed Quickly
On 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.
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The Selfishness of H.R. 3 Is Astounding
The 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.
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TAPP Urges U.S. Representatives to Protect IP and Oppose “Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act through Promoting Competition Act of 2021”
The 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).
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2020 GDP of Selected Regional Free Trade Blocs
Last 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.
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US Must Re-Engage in Trade
Anyone hoping that the Biden administration would pursue international trade policies to counter the protectionism of the Trump administration should be sorely disappointed…
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TAPP Urges Senators to Protect IP and Oppose Cornyn-Blumenthal "Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act"
The 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.
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Coalition of 70+ Free Market Organizations Urges Congress to Oppose H.R. 3
The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity and 70 organizations have written a letter to members of Congress, urging them to oppose H.R. 3.
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Call Congress to Oppose H.R. 3, A Terrible, Regressive Drug Bill
On 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.
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TAPP Urges Biden to Protect IP Regarding Electric Vehicle Battery Production in Georgia
Several 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.
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