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**JUNE 17, 2022**
Kuttner on TAP
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**** WTO Fails to Promote COVID
Vaccines
And the U.S., despite Biden's commitment to a waiver of drug company
patent rights, sides with Pharma.
At its ministerial meetings this week, the World Trade Organization
again demonstrated that it is an agency captured by big business, and
that the U.S. should have as little to do with it as possible. After
more than two years of stalling, the WTO bureaucracy and the European
Union, acting at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry, blocked an
effort to waive intellectual-property rules to promote wide distribution
of COVID vaccines, tests, and treatments. The U.S. behaved like a
helpless bystander.
The official text, pushed through by the WTO's director-general over
the objections of more than 100 member nations and at least 250 global
public-health and civil society groups, reinforces existing property
rights and fails utterly to promote vaccinations in poor countries.
Ministers from several key nations of the Global South that had been
pushing for the emergency waiver, notably South Africa and India, did
not even get to see text issued in the name of the whole WTO.
If anything was worse than this travesty of public-health policy and
democratic process, it was the official U.S. response. After the
document was issued, the U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, put
out a fatuous and misleading statement
ducking the specific flaws in the text and claiming, "Through difficult
and protracted discussions, Members were able to bridge differences and
achieve a concrete and meaningful outcome to get more safe and effective
vaccines to those who need it most."
She referenced President Biden's support for an emergency vaccine
waiver, first articulated in May 2021, and implied that this deal
carries it out. It does not.
I've been a big fan of Katherine Tai. She has stood up to pressure,
from inside the administration and outside, to weaken the China tariffs.
The kindest thing one can assume is that Tai can only fight so many
battles and was told by higher-ups to accept the WTO deal.
Even more disingenuous was Tai's claim that "Consultations with our
stakeholders in the private sector and civil society, with Members of
Congress and their staffs, and colleagues across the Administration,
were critical in informing USTR's understanding of the nuances in the
global market, production challenges, and the public health needs of the
world's people."
In fact, according to my reporting, Tai's staff spent several days
trying to get any public-interest group to say something kind about the
WTO text. All refused.
What now? The major U.S. groups, such as Public Citizen's Global Trade
Watch, Rethink Trade, and the Trade Justice Education Fund, want the
U.S. to bypass the WTO as much as possible and to take no actions
that would punish nations of the Global South that take steps to produce
the vaccines, tests, and treatments they need without further enriching
giant drug companies. That seems the least Biden should do.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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