Himes: USTR Says Drug IP Rules Will Treat Poor TPP Countries Differently

摘要

One of the 28 House Democrats who voted for fast-track trade legislation has said he decided to support the bill in part based on assurances from U.S. trade negotiators that intellectual property (IP) rules for drugs in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will differentiate between rich and poor countries and not hinder access to affordable medicines. Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) told reporters on June 18 after voting a second time for fast track that he had concluded he would back the legislation only after carefully studying a variety of TPP issues like IP, reading the draft agreement text, and speaking with the U.S. TPP IP negotiator to understand the direction of the talks. He said the U.S. negotiators conveyed to him that there will be "different regimes for different levels of development," although he was not certain about how this would function specifically. "I talked with the IP negotiator about, will this be GDP-per-capita based? I don't think it's that simple. But the point is, I know the administration is working on differentiating between countries that can pay for their own drugs and countries that can't," he said.