Last Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee held its confirmation hearing for the Obama Administration’s nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman. The hearing webpage has a webcast and prepared statements by Froman, as well as Chairman Baucus and Ranking Minority…
In this year’s Special 301 report, the United States Trade Representative listed Ukraine as a “Priority Foreign Country” (aka PFC), triggering a 30 day countdown to initiate an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act to determine trade sanctions.…
The first Obama campaign for the presidency reached out to access to medicines campaigners to join the broad coalition he was building to gain the presidency. In response to their concerns, he declared that his presidency would “break the stranglehold…
One of the diverse sources from which the international intellectual property regime emanates is an annual unilateral adjudication of foreign government trade policies by the United States under the so-called “Special 301” program and report. For over two decades the…
American University Washington College of Law Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) Associate Director Sean Flynn testified at today’s Special 301 hearing at the United States Trade Representative’s office. This blog summarizes some of the comments made to…
[Posted by Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan on the International Economic Law and Policy Blog (CC BY-NC 2.5)] Last week, Luke Peterson reported that the U.S. based pharma corporation Eli Lilly has put Canada on notice of its intent to submit a claim…
Excerpt from a Fact Sheet from Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. Click here for the full Fact Sheet Eli Lilly and Company has initiated formal proceedings under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to attack Canada’s standards for granting…
[Reposted with permission from citizen.org] November 10, 2012 marked the first anniversary of the global Kaletra campaign, a campaign comprising health groups in 12 countries challenging pharmaceutical monopolies including Abbott Laboratories’ hold on HIV/AIDS treatment Kaletra and its components lopinavir…
Beginning with the 2009 report, the USTR began hosting a public hearing and making small efforts to improve public participation in the Special 301 adjudication process. But, as in the past, the 2012 report shows that USTR largely ignores the…
On February 29, the PIJIP office submitted several Freedom of Information Act requests to the United States Trade Representative to gather more information on the current procedure for compiling Special 301 Reports. Among them was a general request for…
On Tuesday, the Ukraine initiated a formal trade dispute with Australia through the WTO’s Dispute Settlement System. The Ukraine alleges that Australia’s Plain Packaging Act, which provides that “no trade mark may appear anywhere on a tobacco product” violates TRIPS…
As the U.S. enters a new round of TPP negotiations this week, it is being asked to initiate a formal trade dispute with one of the other countries at the negotiating table. Inside U.S. Trade reports that Senator Hatch has…