Testimony from Edward Gresser
House Judiciary Committee
Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet
June 6, 2023
Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member,
Thank you very much for inviting me to testify at this morning’s hearing on intellectual property, innovation, and the U.S. competition with China, focused on the World Trade Organization and its decision on waiver of patent obligations for COVID-19 vaccines and potentially for “diagnostics and therapeutics” related to COVID-19.
By way of introduction, I am Vice President of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) here in Washington, D.C., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research institution established in 1989 and publishing in a wide range of public policy topics. Before joining PPI, I served at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from 2015 to 2021 as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Policy and Economics, with responsibility for overseeing USTR’s economic research and use of trade data, chairing the interagency Trade Policy Staff Committee, and administering the Generalized System of Preferences. This period coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2019 and extended through the initial WTO discussions on a temporary waiver of some elements of the 1994 TRIPS agreement relating to COVID vaccines.
The hearing poses some important questions. Specifically, how does the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) relate to U.S. interests in innovation and technological progress? Was the Biden administration correct to support a waiver of some of the TRIPS patent provisions for COVID-19 vaccines? Will this be to the advantage of China vis-à-vis the United States? I can summarize my view of this in four points.
