A Good Fortnight for the TRIPs Waiver: Building Momentum

In the last two weeks, United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai spoke with the trade ministers of India and South Africa, the leading co-sponsors of the original TRIPs Waiver proposal, providing encouragement to move forward on a revised text.  The new draft, released Friday, is a strong signal of momentum, reflecting a determination not to go down the rabbit hole of typically drawn out WTO negotiations and legal haggling (as many TRIPs Waiver skeptics had predicted would happen); I'll elaborate on  some of the key features of the new draft  in a separate post on this blog.

Tai has also used the last fortnight to press the issue in bilaterals with the head of the World Health Organization and with her Japanese and Swiss counterparts. Meanwhile Bolivia  has taken the step of notifying the WTO of its intent to use the existing access to medicines flexibilities in TRIPs for COVID-19 vaccines.      Whether Bolivia's move is to show up the red tape and onerous conditions involved in using the access to medicines amendment (that itself originated with an earlier Waiver), or to point to a potential alternative route to vaccine equity, through challenging WTO Members to bypass the roadblocks in existing law, is difficult to discern.  But The European Commission now seems to have taken up this last possibility; on Friday Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen tweeted that the EU would table at the WTO a proposal including "simplifying use of compulsory licenses in crisis times where needed," a grudging and stingy concession to the need to loosen TRIPs obstacles on vaccines.   This comes fast on the heels of the European Parliament backing a resolution in favor of the TRIPs Waiver.

But the most important development in the geopolitics of the Waiver,is China's announcement of  support.  This has multiple layers of meaning. The European Commission having embraced China with an investment deal at Berlin's behest, the EU is now entangled in a fight with Beijing over human rights that has placed the investment agreement on ice. China's support for the TRIPs Waiver offers a contrast with Waiver-resistant Brussels putting ruthless capitalism ahead of lives-not a good look while lecturing Beijing about human values.

More fundamentally, China's backing for the  TRIPs Waiver offers the possibility that, despite the apparent Cold War between Beijing and Washington,the deep cleavages over human rights and democracy as well as trade and security, the two great powers might be able to work together at a multlateral institution like the WTO-at least where human lives are a stake in a global emergency.