US lawmakers urge Biden to support India

Washington: A group of American lawmakers has urged President Joe Biden to support the move by India and South Africa before the World Trade Organization for an emergency temporary waiver of some Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) rules to enable greater production and supply of Covid-19 vaccines, treatments, and diagnostic tests. The move comes after India and South Africa, along with several other countries, urgently went to the WTO seeking a time-limited waiver of the TRIPS agreement. The previous Trump administration had opposed such a move.

At a news conference here on Wednesday, the lawmakers Rosa DeLauro, Jan Schakowsky, Earl Blumenauer, Lloyd Doggett, Adriano Espaillat, and Andy Levin urged President Biden to support the emergency temporary waiver at the WTO as requested by countries led by India and South Africa. The lawmakers said more than 60 US representatives would collectively write to Biden to announce support for the TRIPS waiver proposed by India and South Africa at the WTO. The temporary TRIPS waiver would allow countries and manufacturers to directly access and share technologies to produce vaccines and therapeutics without causing trade sanctions or international disputes, they said. "The Biden administration has an obligation to reverse the damage done by the Trump administration and re-establish our nation's global reputation as a public health leader," said DeLauro. "As we see every day, the Covid-19 pandemic knows no borders.

Our globalised systems cannot recover if only parts of the world are vaccinated and have protection against the virus. We must make vaccines available everywhere if we are going to crush the virus anywhere, and we need to make public policy choices, both in the US and at the WTO, that put people first," DeLauro said. "Congress has appropriated billions of dollars of emergency relief for the travel, tourism, and hospitality industries and is planning billions more. The faster we can bring this emergency to an end, the faster these industries can recover. President Biden's support for the TRIPS waiver is key to the end of the pandemic and the beginning of a strong global recovery."

Schakowsky said big pharma companies are adamantly opposed, claiming in their letter to President Biden that "intellectual property is the foundation for both the development and sharing of new technologies," not mentioning their own profits or the billions of dollars that taxpayers have contributed to their research and development.