Pharma groups lead attacks on TPP trade deal
US President Barack Obama’s plan to get a vast Pacific Rim trade deal through Congress this year is taking flak from the presidential campaign trail, where disdain for the pact appears to be one of the rare unifying themes for almost everyone from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton.
Key GOP leaders such as Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, do not like the intellectual property protections his administration negotiated for biologics in the TPP. They have vowed to block ratification until something changes.
US law calls for 12 years of exclusivity for biologics, something Washington sought to have replicated in the TPP. But, backed by campaign groups such as Médecins Sans Frontières who argue that such long periods help inflate drug prices by preventing generic competitors, Australia, Peru and other countries pushed for a five-year period. Under a fudge reached at the end of marathon negotiations in Atlanta in October, the deal eventually called for a period of either five or eight years depending on circumstances.
The compromise drew the ire of the pharmaceuticals industry, which has been lobbying heavily since for a change. ... Administration officials insist they will not renegotiate the TPP, which took five years of discussions to get done.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eb52ea88-cb46-11e5-be0b-b7ece4e953a0.html
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