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**SEPTEMBER 17, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Vaccine Update: Pfizer Sticks It to Uncle Sam

****

The U.S. plans to purchase from Pfizer and donate to Third World
countries hundreds of millions of doses

of the COVID vaccine, according to a story leaked to

**The Washington Post**. This is in addition to the more than 136
million doses already donated
, according
to the State Department.

This is a great thing, right? No, it's a travesty. The total global
need is at least 13 billion doses. Back in May, President Biden did
something worth celebrating. He authorized U.S. Trade Representative
Katherine Tai to reverse the long-standing U.S. opposition to waiving
the patent, copyright, and trademark protections

of the WTO treaty known as TRIPS, to which the U.S. is a party.

With that waiver, countries with vaccine manufacturing capacity, such as
India, could produce the Pfizer vaccine at cost, at adequate quantities,
and deliver it worldwide. But since that brave gesture, career U.S.
trade officials based at WTO headquarters in Geneva have slow-rolled the
TRIPS waiver, and there has been no progress at getting vaccines
actually produced in quantity.

It is even more of a travesty if Pfizer, which has already made many
billions in windfall COVID profits, is charging Uncle Sam, aka the U.S.
taxpayer, any kind of a markup. In the leaked

**Post** story, terms were not disclosed.

The more the administration plays Pfizer's game to purchase and donate
what should be a public good, the more it plays into the drug
industry's hands and diverts public attention from the stalled TRIPS
waiver.

Meanwhile, Big Pharma uses its muscle to kill Biden's plans for
reduced prescription drug costs to Americans. Want to pay the drug
companies back? Get the TRIPS waiver done.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

[link removed]

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