April, 13 2021, 12:00am EDT
On Eve of WTO COVID Meeting: Director General's "Third Way" Is Same Old Way of Big Pharma Control Over COVID Vaccine Supply, Rebranded
The World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General (DG) is holding a "Third Way" COVID-19 vaccine confab in Geneva on April 14th that at best is a distraction from an effective initiative that falls squarely within the WTO's actual remit.
WASHINGTON
The World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General (DG) is holding a "Third Way" COVID-19 vaccine confab in Geneva on April 14th that at best is a distraction from an effective initiative that falls squarely within the WTO's actual remit. That would be a temporary COVID-19 waiver of patent, copyright, industrial design and undisclosed information terms of the WTO Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreement, to the extent they hinder the "prevention, treatment and control" of the COVID-19 pandemic.
By design, what the WTO DG has dubbed the "Third Way" is unlikely to help bolster COVID-19 vaccine or treatment supplies because it leaves the same few pharmaceutical firms in total control of supply. Relying on contract manufacturing and voluntary licensing is the approach that has led to massive shortages with a few firms controlling if, where and when supply will be manufactured and can be sold or distributed and at what price. Horrifyingly, the world is not expected to reach herd immunity until 2024 under this regime.
The WTO DG has said that current annual global COVID vaccine production capacity is 3.5 billion doses. But between 10-16 billion are needed to reach herd immunity, assuming 70% of population vaccination levels and some vaccines being two-shot regimes. There is no option but to create significantly more production capacity, especially given the prospect that these will not be one-time shots but perhaps needed on an ongoing basis if, like flu vaccines, they must be repeated or if booster shots have to be given.
The role of the WTO and its DG should be to facilitate negotiations among WTO member nations to fix the problem that is caused by existing WTO rules on intellectual property. Many health and vaccine-specific agencies already have initiatives underway that have failed to coax vaccine originator firms to license or otherwise share their technology. And, not one firm has participated in the World Health Organization's voluntary COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). Various global and even national agencies are better suited than the WTO to play matchmaker between originators and prospective manufacturers.
But missed connections are not the issue: Until policies change so vaccine originating firms do not have total control over production, such as a WTO TRIPS waiver and related government actions to pressure for tech transfers, supplies of vaccines and treatments will remain short. Many qualified firms in developing nations have sought licenses or contract manufacturing deals. Instead of agreeing to boost global production, vaccine originators have used their IP monopolies to effectively block production to supply markets they consider unprofitable. Their focus is not on global access. Consider Pfizer's investor relations VP's recent announcement that the firm will shift production next year to boosters for sale to rich nations at higher prices.
Had the TRIPS waiver of some WTO Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) been agreed when proposed last year, perhaps more than 27% of people in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) would be projected to get vaccines in 2021. Instead, few will have access until 2022. Many will wait until 2024. The pandemic will rage largely unmitigated among more than three quarters of the world's population.
A temporary TRIPS waiver can make sure "trade" rules are not an obstacle to countries' efforts to protect their residents' health and crush the pandemic. Indeed, the agreement establishing the WTO does not provide authority for the DG to broker deals between private firms. This activity is simply outside of its mandate.
In contrast, negotiating waivers of the obligations contained in WTO agreements due to the development of exceptional circumstances is an explicitly authorized function of the organization. If the COVID-19 pandemic does not constitute such exceptional circumstances, it is unclear what would qualify as such.
Today more than 100 WTO members support the waiver and consider it critical to boost worldwide production of COVID vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests. Many hoped that the arrival of new WTO DG, economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, might move countries currently blocking the waiver. Because South Africa introduced it and the WTO Africa Group supports it unanimously, some WTO members and activists worldwide hoped that the first African WTO DG could help facilitate progress. However, Okonjo-Iweala did not endorse the waiver. Instead, she diverted attention away from it by suggesting a "third way" that is more of what has failed.
Namely, corporations determine where and how much vaccines and other drugs are produced through highly restrictive voluntary licenses and contract manufacturing arrangements, with the monopoly-holding firms deciding if, how much, where and under what terms chosen partners may produce. One example of what the WTO DG proposes is South African firm Aspen's contract manufacturing arrangement with Johnson & Johnson (J&J). According to South Africa's WTO Counselor, for many months 91% of doses produced in South Africa had to be sent for sale in Europe, while only 9% could be used in South Africa.
Many pharmaceutical industry interests oppose the waiver and have a litany of arguments intended to redirect attention away from the core problem of their monopoly control over supply. They claim developing country firms cannot make these vaccines, even as they make limited contracts for such firms to do so. They claim that IP barriers are not a real obstacle to greater production. If IP was not an obstacle, manufacturers all over the world would already have begun to organize more production to fill the chasm between supply and demand. Instead, there are a limited number of market-segmented contract manufacturing arrangements, as determined by developers who restrict access to the technology. Moderna declined to partner with a qualified Bangladeshi vaccine maker while other firms report never getting any response to their inquiries. Just in Africa, "Biovac and Aspen in South Africa, Institute Pasteur in Senegal, and Vacsera in Egypt could rapidly retool factories to make mRNA vaccines," notes a group of medicine-production experts in a recent Foreign Policy article. Indeed, while COVID-19 shone a spotlight on the mRNA platform, for two decades researchers around the world have attempted to harness it for vaccines and therapies. A former Moderna director of chemistry revealed that with enough technology transfer and knowhow-sharing, a modern factory should be able to get mRNA vaccine production online in three to four months. The result of the originators' unwillingness to partner is a huge gap between needed global supply and the production levels that vaccine developers deem useful for their business strategy, which is focused mostly on selling at higher prices to rich and upper-middle-income countries.
Failure to enact a waiver in the face of this unprecedented health and economic crisis could be the final blow that dooms the WTO. The existential and intensifying crisis that has wracked the WTO in recent years is in no small part a consequence of the organization getting involved in or being used to dealing with issues clearly outside of its mandate. And the WTO's increasing irrelevance is related to the body not succeeding in managing problems and concerns that are directly in its remit.
The "third way" approach would double down on the same mistakes. By not prioritizing the negotiation of waiver language agreeable to all WTO member countries and desperately needed to address THE priority concern of many, the organization will become more irrelevant, while also alienating 100-plus countries that support the TRIPS waiver. If the new DG pulls the WTO -- an organization devised to negotiate and administer rules -- into instead pretending to become an international deal broker, it will only amplify concerns about the WTO staff and structures overstepping the authorities provided by member countries.
The way forward at the WTO is clear. Existing WTO rules are obstacles to scaling up global production and thus facilitating more equitable distribution of affordable, safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests. Eliminating these obstacles is not the final step to greater production, but the first, so there is no time to waste. The DG's priority should be to pave a quick path to countries engaging in text-based negotiations on a waiver. If some WTO member countries have specific concerns with the waiver that South Africa and India have proposed, then the way forward is to offer changes to that proposal. Facilitating negotiations among WTO members to fix a problem caused by existing WTO rules, by preparing a waiver text that can be approved by all at the WTO General Council, is precisely the role of the DG and the WTO.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Right-Wingers Plot to Give Trump Control Over Federal Reserve If Reelected
"Under such an approach, the chair would regularly seek Trump's views on interest-rate policy and then negotiate with the committee to steer policy on the president's behalf," The Wall Street Journal reported.
Apr 26, 2024
Right-wing allies of former U.S. President Donald Trump are reportedly crafting a plan to give the executive branch control over Federal Reserve policy decisions, an effort that comes as the presumptive GOP nominee continues to signal his authoritarian intentions for a potential second term.
The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that former Trump administration officials and other supporters of the ex-president "have in recent months discussed a range of proposals, from incremental policy changes to a long-shot assertion that the president himself should play a role in setting interest rates."
"A small group of the president's allies—whose work is so secretive that even some prominent former Trump economic aides weren't aware of it—has produced a roughly 10-page document outlining a policy vision for the central bank," the Journal reported. "The group of Trump allies argues that he should be consulted on interest-rate decisions, and the draft document recommends subjecting Fed regulations to White House review and more forcefully using the Treasury Department as a check on the central bank. The group also contends that Trump, if he returns to the White House, would have the authority to oust Jerome Powell as Fed chair before his four-year term ends in 2026."
During his first four years in the White House, Trump repeatedly criticized Powell—whom the former president appointed in 2017—over the central bank's interest rate policy and insisted he had the authority to oust the Fed chair before the end of his term. The Fed is an independent body subject to limited congressional oversight.
"I have the right to do that," Trump said in 2019 of ousting Powell. "I'm not happy with his actions, I don't think he's done a good job."
The Fed, still under Powell's leadership, has since jacked up interest rates to their highest level in decades in an attempt to combat inflation—an approach that progressive lawmakers and economists have criticized as misguided, arguing that prices were elevated primarily by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and corporate profiteering and that hiking rates would harm workers.
Late last year, Trump said interest rates were "too high" but did not say he would pressure the central bank to lower them, saying: "Depends where inflation is. But I would get inflation down."
More recently, Trump suggested the Fed's indication that rate cuts are coming in the near future as inflation cools is a political ploy to "help the Democrats."
"It looks to me like he's trying to lower interest rates for the sake of maybe getting people elected, I don't know," Trump said in a Fox Business appearance in February.
Economist Paul Krugman predicted in his New York Timescolumn earlier this year that "Trumpist attacks on the Fed for cutting interest rates are coming."
"What we don't know is how the Fed will react," Krugman wrote. "In a recent dialogue with me about the economy, my colleague Peter Coy suggested that the Fed may be inhibited from cutting rates because it'll fear accusations from Trump that it's trying to help Biden. I hope Fed officials understand that they'll be betraying their responsibilities if they let themselves be intimidated in this way."
"And I hope that forewarned is forearmed," he added. "MAGA attacks on the Fed are coming; they should be treated as the bad-faith bullying they are."
The Journal reported Thursday that "several people who have spoken with Trump about the Fed said he appears to want someone in charge of the institution who will, in effect, treat the president as an ex officio member of the central bank's rate-setting committee."
"Under such an approach, the chair would regularly seek Trump's views on interest-rate policy and then negotiate with the committee to steer policy on the president's behalf," the newspaper continued. "Some of the former president's advisers have discussed requiring that candidates for Fed chair privately agree to consult informally with Trump on the central bank's decisions... Others have made the case that Trump himself could sit on the Fed's board of governors on an acting basis, an option that several people close to the former president described as far-fetched."
According to earlier Journal reporting, Trump's team has discussed several possible replacements for Powell, including former White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett and Arthur Laffer, a former Reagan adviser and notorious tax-cut enthusiast.
Trump allies' plot to help the former president exert control over Fed policy if he's reelected in November is further evidence of the presumptive GOP nominee's increasingly authoritarian ambitions.
During his campaign for a second term, Trump—who is facing 88 charges across four criminal cases—has vowed to be a dictator on "day one," wield federal authority to go after his political opponents, launch the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history," and use the U.S. military to crack down on protests.
"If a president is truly determined to make himself a dictator, the question at the end of the day is whether the military and other force-deploying agencies of the federal government are willing to go along," Josh Chafetz, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University, toldThe Washington Post in a recent interview. "If they are, there's not much Congress or the courts could do about it."
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Trump—the presumptive Republican candidate to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden, despite his 88 felony charges in four ongoing criminal cases—is arguing that presidential immunity should protect him from federal charges for trying to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden, which culminated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Justices across the ideological spectrum didn't seem inclined to support Trump's broad immunity claims—which critics have said "reflect a misreading of constitutional text and history as well as this court's precedent." However, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) shared examples of what it would mean if they did.
"Trump could sell pardons, ambassadorships, and other official benefits to his wealthy donors, members of his clubs, or cronies who helped him commit other crimes," CREW warned. "Trump could sell nuclear codes and government secrets to help pay back crippling debts."
"But this isn't just about what Donald Trump could do. It's really about how total immunity for the president would threaten our democratic system of checks and balances," the group continued. "The president could order the military to assassinate activists, political opponents, members of Congress, or even Supreme Court justices, so long as he claimed it related to some official act."
After warning that a president could also order the occupation or closure of the Capitol or high court to prevent actions against him, CREW concluded that "the Supreme Court never should have taken this appeal up in the first place. They should rule quickly and shut these ludicrous claims down for good."
The organization was far from alone in demanding a quick decision from the nation's highest court.
"In the name of accountability, the court must not delay its decision," the Brennan Center for Justice said Thursday evening. "The Supreme Court's time is up. It needs to let the prosecution move forward. The court decided Bush v. Gore in three days—it should act with similar alacrity in deciding Trump v. U.S."
In Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 election, the high court issued a related stay on December 9, heard oral arguments on December 11, and issued a final decision on December 12.
On Thursday, the arguments "got away from the central question: Is a former president immune from criminal prosecution if he tried to overthrow a presidential election, using private means and the power of his office to do so?" the Brennan Center noted. "The answer is simple: No."
"It is not an 'official act' to try to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power or the Constitution, even if you conspire with other government officials to do it or use the Oval Office phone," the center said. "Trump's attorney was pushing the court to come up with a sea change in the law. That's unnecessary and a delay tactic that will hurt the pursuit of justice in this case."
In a departure from previous claims, Trump's attorney, D. John Sauer, "appeared to agree with Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, that there are some allegations in the indictment that do not involve 'official acts' of the president," NBC Newsreported, noting questions from liberal Justice Elena Kagan and conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee.
Barrett summarized various allegations from the indictment and in three cases—involving dishonest election claims, false allegations of fraud, and fake electors—Sauer conceded that Trump's alleged conduct sounded private, suggesting that a more narrow case against the ex-president that excluded any potential official acts could proceed.
Due to Trump attorney's concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there's now a very clear path for DOJ's case to go forward.\n\nIt'd be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further.\n\nJustice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.\u2b07\ufe0f— (@)
According to NBC:
Matthew Seligman, a lawyer and a fellow at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School who filed a brief backing prosecutors, said Sauer's concessions highlight that Trump is "not immune for the vast majority of the conduct alleged in the indictment."
Ultimately, he said, the case will go to trial "absent some external intervention—like Trump ordering [the Justice Department] to drop the charges" after having won the election.
At the same time, Sauer's backtracking might have little consequence from an electoral perspective. Further delay in a trial, which Sauer is close to achieving, is a form of victory in itself.
Slate's Mark Joseph Stern pointed out that when Barrett similarly questioned Michael Dreeben, the U.S. Department of Justice lawyer arguing the case for Smith, it seemed like they "were trying to work out some compromise wherein the trial court could distinguish between official and unofficial acts, then instruct the jury not to impose criminal liability on the former."
"It was fascinating to watch Barrett nodding along as Dreeben pitched a compromise that would largely preserve Smith's January 6 prosecution but limit what the jury could hear, or at least consider," Stern added. "That, though, would take months to suss out in the trial court. More delays!"
Stern and other experts signaled that the decision likely comes down to Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts, with the three liberals seemingly supporting the prosecution of Trump and the other four conservatives suggesting it is unconstitutional.
People for the American Way president Svante Myrick said in a statement that "today's argument brought both good and bad news. It was chilling to hear Donald Trump's lawyer say that staging a military coup could be considered part of a president's official duties."
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Trump was not at the Supreme Court on Thursday; he was at his trial in New York, where he faces 34 counts for allegedly falsifying business records related to hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 election cycle. The are two other cases: a federal one for mishandling classified material and another in Georgia for interfering with the last presidential contest.
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"Through people-powered resistance, we can give money a conscience and stop Citi's destruction of our planet," said one Indigenous campaigner.
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Twenty more demonstrators were arrested Thursday, the second day of Earth Week protests targeting Citigroup's Manhattan headquarters in what organizers called "the beginning of a wave of direct actions to take place over the summer targeting big banks for creating climate chaos that is killing our communities and our planet."
Protest organizers—who include Climate Defenders, New York Communities for Change, Planet over Profit, and Stop the Money Pipeline—said 53 activists were arrested over two days of demonstrations, which included blocking the entrance to Citigroup's headquarters, to "demand that the bank stop funding fossil fuels."
Organizers said this week's demonstrations "were just the beginning" of what they're calling a "Summer of Heat" targeting big banks for their role in the climate emergency and for "polluting our land, air, and water, and threatening the health of children, families, and our planet." Citigroup is the world's second-largest fossil fuel financier.
"We're holding Citi accountable for financing dirty fossil fuels from Canada to Latin America and beyond," said Chief Na'moks of the Wet'suwet'en Nation, one of several Indigenous leaders who took part in the action. "Through people-powered resistance, we can give money a conscience and stop Citi's destruction of our planet."
Jonathan Westin, executive director of Climate Defenders, asserted that "Citigroup's racist funding of oil, coal, and gas is creating climate chaos that's devastating communities of color across the country."
"We're taking action to tell Citi that we won't put up with their environmental racism for one more day," Westin continued. "Our communities have reached the boiling point. Our children have asthma, our city's sky was orange, and our air polluted because of the climate crisis caused by Citi and Wall Street."
"We're going to keep organizing and taking direct action until Citi listens to us," he vowed.
Stop the Money Pipeline co-director Alec Connon said: "To have any chance of reigning in the climate crisis, we must stop investing in fossil fuel expansion. Yet, Citibank is pumping billions of dollars into new coal, oil, and gas projects."
"We're here to make it clear: If they're going to fund the companies disrupting our climate and our lives, we're going to disrupt their business," Connon added.
Activists have repeatedly targeted Citigroup in recent years as the megabank has pumped more than $300 billion into fossil fuel investments around the world since the Paris climate agreement.
According to the protest organizers:
Citi has provided $668 million in funding to Formosa Plastics between 2001-2021, which is trying to build a $9.4 billion plastics facility in a majority Black community in the heart of Cancer Alley in Louisiana.
Citigroup is also one of the biggest funders of state-run oil and gas companies in the Amazon basin, pumping in over $40 billion between 2016-2020, and a major backer of Petroperú, which has been involved in oil spills and Indigenous rights violations.
"From wildfires, heatwaves, and floods to deadly air pollution and mass drought, Citi's fossil fuel financing is killing us," said Alice Hu of New York Communities for Change. "We've sent polite petitions and had pleading meetings with bank representatives, but Citi refuses to stop pouring billions each year into coal, oil, and gas."
"That's why we're fighting for our lives now with the best tool we have left: mass, nonviolent disruptive civil disobedience," Hu added.
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