AFL-CIO, DeLauro Call for Biologics, Dispute Settlement Changes in New NAFTA
NAFTA foe Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who is on the working group seeking changes to the NAFTA replacement, joined with the president of the AFL-CIO, the head of Global Trade Watch, and a handful of progressive House members to say that Americans are demanding that the biologics exclusivity period be dropped from the trade deal.
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A 10-year exclusivity period for biologics -- two years shorter than U.S. law but longer than the eight years in the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- has been a lightning rod for House Democrats, who believe they won a majority on the health care issue. The first meeting between the working group and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, scheduled for late afternoon on June 25, was expected to focus on biologics.
DeLauro, D-Conn., opening up the press conference earlier that day, said the 10-year patent is "a gift to Pharma" and longer patent protection for biologics have "no business being in a free trade agreement, and we want it out." The press conference included union members and Global Trade Watch activists who had collected hundreds of thousands of signatures saying the new NAFTA needs to be fixed.
Andy Levin, D-Mich., said, "NAFTA was a disasta," especially for Michigan. He said preserving investor-state dispute settlement for oil companies operating in Mexico is wrong, "and especially the sweet deal [Lighthizer] made with big Pharma cannot stand."
Union leaders and Congress members talked angrily about the manufacturing jobs that went to Mexico after NAFTA's passage. Rep. Donald Norcross, D-N.J., said, "In my district alone, almost 20,000 manufacturing jobs went south." He said NAFTA may have benefited company owners, but "if you were the worker, you got screwed royally."
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said he'd just finished a tour of "Ground Zero for failed trade policy" -- Youngstown, Akron, Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio, as well as Pittsburgh and Detroit.
"Do we want to replace NAFTA? You bet we do," he said. "But doing it right is better than doing it fast." He said union members are telling him, "The new NAFTA is not good enough yet," and he said the ability to block panels in state-to-state disputes has to be fixed so that the agreement can be enforceable. DeLauro, in an interview after the press conference, agreed, saying, "we need to allow panels to be called."
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who recently introduced a bill that would reduce the U.S. patent protection for biologics from 12 years to five, said she decided that her previous versions of the PRICED Act were not strict enough. (Two earlier bills called for a seven-year monopoly for biologics). "Five-year patent exclusivity is absolutely sufficient," Schakowsky told International Trade Today. "We also have to deal with what is called evergreening, where these companies change one little thing with the drug they offer and ask for an additional 10 years, 12 years of patent exclusivity." Schakowsky, who also is one of two members of the working group targeting the biologics change, said her starting argument to Lighthizer that afternoon would be "just take it out" of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
DeLauro added that biologics are 2 percent of prescriptions, but 60 percent of prescription drug spending. "That puts it into perspective," she said.