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US prez undecided on TRIPS waiver at World Trade Organization
India and South Africa moved the proposal before the WTO last October when Trump was still in office
US President Joe Biden is yet to make a decision on a proposal before the WTO to temporarily waive intellectual property rights to Covid-19 vaccines as supporters and opponents, newly joined by Republican lawmakers, mount pressure on him in anticipation of a resolution of the issue at the world body’s general council meetings.
“We’re going to decide that as we go along. I haven’t made that decision yet,” Biden said of the WTO proposal moved by India and South Africa last October.
A group of Democratic lawmakers pressed him hours later, saying it was past time for him to take a call. “Mr President, stop deciding and start acting,” said Lloyd Doggett, one of the 108 Democratic members of congress who have jointly written to the president asking him to put people before pharmaceutical companies, who are opposing the waiver proposal.
“Even tomorrow, the administration can act,” he added, referring to the two-day meeting of the general council of the WTO starting on Wednesday in Geneva. “Fight this pandemic by expanding global vaccine manufacturing capacity.” Doggett and some other signatories of the joint letter spoke to reporters on Tuesday, to dial up pressure on the eve of the WTO meet.
Also on Tuesday, 12 Republicans urged the Biden administration to continue US opposition to the waiver proposal, which was a decision of the administration of former president Donald Trump.
They said in a letter to US trade representative Katherine Tai that the United States should “continue” to oppose the waiver request calling it “extraordinarily broad and unnecessary to accomplish the goal” of ensuring widespread access to Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics to as many people as possible. This group of Republicans is led by Congressmen Jim Jordan, a staunch Trump loyalist and ally, and Darrell Issa.
India and South Africa moved the proposal before the WTO last October, when Trump was still in office, calling for temporarily waiver of the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to ensure easy and affordable access globally, and specially to developing countries, to Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics and related technologies till the pandemic had been curbed.
Supporters of the proposal, which include more than 100 members countries at the WTO and large number of Democratic lawmakers and rights groups in the United States, have called it a “moral imperative”, arguing, as noted by a group of senators in a letter to Biden, for the need to “prioritise people over pharmaceutical company profits by reversing the Trump position”.
Opponents of the request - the US, the EU, the UK, Japan and Switzerland at the WTO and pharma companies - argue that intellectual property rights are not a barrier to equitable distribution but scaling up production. They have also argued that the waiver threatens the model of on which medicine research and manufacturing is based, and that many of the developing countries that are intended to benefit from the waiver do not have the capability to manufacture them; and there is a national security wrench thrown in as well, the fear of these patents falling into Chinese into Russian hands.
Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to Biden, has jumped into the debate arguing, the waiver will be challenged in courts and the ensuing legal battle hold up supplies for a long time. “Going back and forth, consuming time and lawyers in a legal argument about waivers - that is not the end game,” he told Financial Times. “People are dying around the world, and we have to get vaccines into their arms in the fastest and most efficient way possible.”
