Intellectual property provisions and support for US trade agreements

Abstract

Intellectual property rights are a key piece of the expanded trade agenda, and the United States has pushed hard to strengthen protections beyond WTO standards in its trade agreements. While agreement provisions governing intellectual property are commonly thought to be an important driver of corporate preferences over US trade policy, systematic empirical evidence for this proposition, especially in comparison to other determinants of trade policy, is generally lacking. To fill this void, this paper examines variation in reliance on intellectual property across US industries to explain attitudes and lobbying on US trade agreements. The effects of IP provisions on support for US trade agreements are politically substantial, though trade remains the primary determinant of preferences over trade agreements.