Intellectual property protections and removing price controls on pharmaceuticals imposed by foreign governments have topped the industry's agenda. Its heavy lobbying appears to have paid off.
Recent trade negotiations, such as the proposed Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement involving the United States, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, have incorporated the pharmaceutical companies' primary demands.
For example, a CAFTA-Dominican Republic draft document stipulates that "export and import price requirements" are prohibited "except as permitted in enforcement of countervailing and antidumping duty orders and undertakings." In other words, under the agreement, countries would be barred from capping the price of pharmaceuticals except as a retaliatory measure against another CAFTA signatory's unfair trading practices.
Though CAFTA has yet to be adopted, the USTR has been enforcing its provisions. Last year, when the Guatemalan legislature passed a law that permitted lower priced generic drugs to be marketed alongside their brand-name counterparts—a practice that would cut into the profits of American pharmaceutical companies—the USTR responded by threatening to keep Guatemala out of CAFTA. The legislature repealed the measure.
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