Hello, Washington, Amazon has been sued, and we are talking about Trips again. This is the focus of today’s main article. We will debate within the Ring Road and discuss how the United States should respond to the poor redrafting of the abstentions announced by India and South Africa last Friday.

Chartered waters It marks another sterling quarter for world trade.

The domestic challenge of travel waivers

When the 18th-century poet Alexander Pope coined the term “bathos” to refer to ridiculous things, he might not have thought of India and South Africa’s second breakdown in the Trips exemption proposal. But here we are.

A few weeks ago, when the United States shocked the world, it expressed support for giving up the intellectual property rights of vaccines-which was unthinkable a few months ago-which felt like a moment. India and South Africa seem to be vigorously promoting travel exemptions, but their leaders have not fully convinced them to persuade the United States that they will support vaccine exemptions and thus achieve any goals. Instead, they returned to the table of the World Trade Organization with a crazy broad proposal, which went far beyond the scope of the vaccine and was almost unchanged from the original proposal.

The new proposal proposes to abandon intellectual property rights, including not only patents, but also a series of Covid-related drugs, inspections and copyrights of inputs and ingredients, trade secrets and industrial designs. They are forced to clarify that the range of digital streaming services is so wide (presumably so that you don’t have to claim that you can watch Netflix and listen to Spotify when you recover from the Covid-19 camp). This exemption will also last for three years and must be terminated by the General Council (this indicates that a complete consensus between member states is required, and India and South Africa may reach a complete consensus).

Any other questions Is not Neatly listed in the India/South Africa proposal In a great Twitter thread Written by former WTO cabinet member Peter Ungphakorn (Peter Ungphakorn). He suggested that some WTO members may wish to take more control measures to prevent countries from exporting the doses obtained under the exemption to countries that do not recognize the exemption, and many countries will want to see strong transparency measures.

The Biden administration has run counter to the US business community in supporting exempt vaccines. Those companies will want to be exempt from restrictions. First, a lobbyist told me that it would be helpful if the exemption only lasted for the duration of the pandemic as defined by the World Health Organization. The US pharmaceutical industry lobby group PhRMA is still openly talking about its opposition to the comprehensive exemption and publicizing its efforts to promote vaccine production.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans are increasingly angry at this idea of ??abandonment, and use the argument of pharmaceutical companies that abandoning intellectual property rights can make valuable American technology fall into Chinese hands. Earlier this month, Chuck Grassley, the influential former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, signed a letter with 13 other Republicans asking for details of meetings with officials in India, South Africa and China. Other Republicans, including Pat Toomey, Tim Scott, Richard Burr, and Grassley, once again tried to pass a bill blocking funding to the U.S. Trade Representative to support the measure.

Hill’s Democrats earnestly hope that the United States will give up traveling. This will mean serious negotiations in the United States, which means-if it wants a chance to get Europeans, British, Japanese, Swiss and others to support the exemption, then it may have to make its own proposals. The next informal meeting of the Travel Council is next Monday. It seems unlikely that the United States will submit a text before then.

Someone might say that the United States is not in a hurry to reach any agreement at the WTO, nor will it seriously pressure those countries that are opposed to waiving immunity. Under a cynical interpretation, supporting this exemption is a political activity designed to distract the US from using the National Defense Production Act to scramble vaccines and its AstraZeneca stores (some of which are now donated). If the United States believes that pharmaceutical companies have not done enough to increase production, it can also be used as a tool against pharmaceutical companies.

No matter what the U.S. Trade Representative does next, it must be careful so as not to end up in its own dilemma. Trips critics such as the European Union have been angered, agreeing to give up, and then failing to follow up on their own, realistic proposals in time, which will ultimately intensify the interests of both parties. We will watch their actions on Monday and see how they can avoid this fate.

Chartered waters

The OECD’s latest quarterly snapshot of global trade was released yesterday. Statistics show that from the last quarter of 2020 to the first three months of this year, the recovery of trade in the manufacturing and service industries remains strong.

Except for the United Kingdom, all G20 countries/regions achieved positive growth in merchandise exports in the first quarter. According to the OECD, the weakness of the U.S. dollar and the knock-on effect on commodity prices have played a role. Claire Jones

Trade ties

Today, the “Financial Times” still has a lot of trade with the United States. Kiran Stacey and Nikou Asgari study in depth Big Pharma’s counterattack is aimed at the US’s support for IP waiver. The hard-hit industry found that despite the success of the vaccine, even though its public approval rate has soared, it is still struggling to exert its once political influence.Our leader writer Invest in in U.S. steel tariffs, Saying that the industry can flourish with less protectionism.

Nikkei has more ($, subscription required) Tesla entangled with Beijing. In response to China’s upcoming regulations to prevent the transfer of sensitive information overseas, the automaker has established a new data storage center in mainland China.At the same time, Japan is ready ($) A new US$10 billion line of credit for Export of renewable energy technology And support Southeast Asia’s decarbonization efforts.

Bloomberg has one Great reading ($) in recovery Recycling trade. After China stated in 2017 that it planned to restrict the import of renewable energy, the industry was in a difficult period. But American recyclers have upgraded their facilities to deal with the country’s waste. To paraphrase Frank Zappa, the trash is not dead, it just smells funny. Aime Williams and Claire Jones