United States Trade Representative Research Articles

Should digital taxation be in sync with the OECD-G20 Two-Pillar Framework? An Analysis of the Equalization Levy in India and Its Aftermath.

The flourishing growth of the digital economy in India has made digital taxation an indispensable system in India’s revenue generation. The study provides a detailed assessment of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)- G20(Group of 20) group’s initiatives on digital economy taxation. Furthermore, there is an in-depth analysis of the limitations of the Indian ‘Income Tax Act 1961’ and the subsequent adoption of the equalization levy. The effect of equalization levies on tax treaties, rules, and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) are examined in detail. The economic impact of the equalization levy is also evaluated by analyzing the digital trade restrictiveness index. Finally, an evaluation is carried out on the OECD- G20 Two-Pillar framework on the background of the problems of digital taxation. The study also examines the growth of the equalization levy in India and assesses the USTR (United States Trade Representative) report in light of the equalization levy.

The Effect of Income On The Selection of The Price of Wall Painting Materials In Low Income Community Home Construction (MBR)

Indonesia is no longer a developing country, but has grown gradually to become a developed country. In fact, according to The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), which released the official release on Saturday 22 February 2020, Indonesia is no longer in the developing country category. The Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing (PUPR) admits that housing development for low-income people (MBR) is currently experiencing a number of obstacles. This study aims to determine the effect of income on the price of wall paint materials. The methodology to be used in this study is a rationalistic quantitative methodology. Quantitative research method is research that is full of nuances of numbers in data collection techniques in the field. Quantitative research has characteristics namely hard sciences, 'brief' and narrow focus, reductionistic, logical and deductive reasoning, knowledge base: causal relationships testing theories, control over variables, instruments, basic elements of analysis: numbers, statistical data analysis, generalization Based on statistical tests using the IBM SPSS application, the results obtained are in the form of a very strong influence between monthly income on the choice of wall paint material prices in the construction of houses for Low Income Communities (MBR).

Entrelinhas

Neste artigo, é analisado como a China foi discutida nos documentos do Representante Comercial dos Estados Unidos (USTR) entre 2001 e 2016. A hipótese é que o USTR deixou de perceber a China como um “Estado normal” e passou a percebê-la como um “Estado adversário”, sendo o ponto de virada o período entre 2003 e 2005, no governo de George W. Bush. Utiliza-se a análise de conteúdo para testar a hipótese em dois documentos: a President’s Trade Policy Agenda e o Special 301 Report. Observa-se que desde o período de 2003-2005 as menções à China passaram de um nível normal para um nível extraordinário e o discurso do USTR começou a caracterizar a China de modo mais negativo, anunciando o uso de “todas as ferramentas disponíveis” para responder às práticas comerciais injustas da China. Conclui-se que há lastro empírico para a hipótese e que a percepção de que a China é uma “adversária comercial” dos Estados Unidos tem forte enraizamento burocrático.

Intellectual property and access to medicines: mapping public attitudes toward pharmaceuticals during the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) negotiation process

BackgroundTransparency and accountability are essential components at all stages of the trade negotiation process. This study evaluates the extent to which these principles were upheld in the United States’ public consultation process during the negotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), with respect to public comments about the pharmaceutical sector and access to medicines.ResultsThe public consultation process occurred before the start of official negotiations and was overseen by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). It included both written comments and oral testimony about US trade negotiation objectives. Of the written comments that specifically discussed issues relating to pharmaceuticals, the majority were submitted by private individuals, members of the pharmaceutical industry, and civil society organizations. Nearly all comments submitted by non-industry groups indicated that access to medicines was a priority issue in the renegotiated agreement, with specific reference to price affordability. By contrast, more than 50% of submissions received from members or affiliates of the pharmaceutical industry advocated for strengthened pharmaceutical intellectual property rights, greater regulatory data protections, or both.This study reveals mixed outcomes with respect to the level of transparency achieved in the US trade negotiation process. Though input from the public at-large was actively solicited, the extent to which these comments were considered in the content of the final agreement is unclear. A preliminary comparison of the analyzed comments with the USTR’s final negotiating objectives and the final text of the USMCA shows that several provisions that were advanced exclusively by the pharmaceutical industry and ultimately adopted in the final agreement were opposed by the majority of non-industry stakeholders.ConclusionsNegotiators could increase public transparency when choosing to advance one competing trade objective over another by actively providing the public with clear rationales for their negotiation positions, as well as details on how public comments are taken into account to form these rationales. Without greater clarity on these aspects, the public consultation process risks appearing to serve as a cursory government mechanism, lacking in accountability and undermining public trust in both the trade negotiation process and its outcomes.

The U.S. Posture on Global Access to Medication & the Case for Change

The TRIPS Waiver sought by India and South Africa features as the hot button issue of 2021. This paper enables that discussion by empirically showcasing the traditional role of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on the question of pharmaceutical patents. The USTR is authorized by statute to identify and pursue countries perceived as denying adequate and effective protection of intellectual property (IP) rights and/or fair and equitable market access to U.S. industries or entities that rely on IP protection. The paper examines whether the allegations of poorer nations that repeatedly, the changes sought by the US have often deterred other member nations from using negotiated trade flexibilities. In doing so, this paper highlights that, it is a fact that the USTR has historically exerted pressure - often, unilaterally - on other countries in a manner that violates the spirit of the multilateral dispute settlement mechanism of the World Trade Organization. The paper showcases the number of times the USTR has tended to focus its allegations of violations on pharmaceuticals, seemingly only based on the rhetoric from PhRMA. In fact, once a country is an identified violator, the USTR has tended towards applying direct and indirect pressure through trade negotiations and preference systems in order to win policy changes favoring the U.S. intellectual property owners. The unfortunate reality, this paper concludes , is that traditionally many such changes sought by the USTR lack due consideration of local realities, and has not truly allowed allies to use negotiated TRIPS- flexibilities meant to provide access to medications in the targeted nations. The numbers in this paper speaks for itself as the US considers whether the TRIPS Waiver should be supported. The adverse impact of COVID-19 on trade necessitates us to factually asses local realities as well as the role of the US as a global leader to prioritize GLOBAL public health as a means to restore trade.

US Trade Actions Against China: A Supply Chain Perspective

In 2018, the United States (US) Administration initiated several trade actions, including tariffs on China for unfair trade practices outlined by the US Trade Representative (USTR). In response, China filed requests for consultations with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and has implemented or threatened to implement increased tariffs on US products. In this article, the implications of current and potential US trade actions and responses by China on the US and global economy are estimated. We employ a dynamic supply chain model based on the widely used Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) Data Base and model. Our analysis finds that US gross domestic product (GDP) would be reduced by a projected –0.86 per cent in 2030 (or US$227.8 billion in 2017 dollars), as the role of the USA in global supply chains declines significantly. China’s GDP would also decline considerably by 2.84 per cent as a result of the actions imposed against it, while the rest of the world gain, as they fill the gaps left by US and Chinese producers. JEL: F16, C68

It is time to change US trade policy to foster access to medicines

While Americans are deeply concerned about drug prices, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) continues to negotiate agreements like the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that put at risk the sustainability of the generics industry and undermine the development of biosimilars that play a critical role in access to medicines. It is time to restore some balance to US trade policy.

Mercantalist Concerns in US GSP Law: Termination of GSP Benefits to India

As has been the case with many developed countries, the United States unilaterally grants trade preferences to developing countries under its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) Programme. The US GSP Programme is granted on the basis of a few conditions, some of which are compulsory, while others are discretionary on part of the President of the US. In June 2018, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) conducted a review of India’s eligibility as a Beneficiary Developing Country on the grounds that India does not provide the US ‘equitable and reasonable access to its markets’. This is one of the discretionary conditions under the GSP Programme. On 31 May 2019, the US President, via Proclamation 9902, modified the list of Beneficiary Developing Countries withdrawing the GSP benefits that were granted to India, citing India’s failure to fulfil the said market access condition. In light of this, the article analyses the legality of grant and withdrawal of GSP benefits on this market access condition with respect to the World Trade Organization (WTO) law. The article begins with exploring the historical development of the Generalized System of Preferences from the GATT-era to the present WTO regime. It then examines the validity of the US GSP Programme in light of the relevant WTO framework, in particular, the 1979 Enabling Clause. It also analyses the US GSP Programme in light of the WTO Appellate Body Report in the EC – Tariff Preferences case. The article concludes by suggesting the possible arguments that India could make in a potential dispute and the larger political ramifications of challenging the US GSP Programme.

Assessing the Climate Impacts of U.S. Trade Agreements

Meeting the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement will require the United States and other major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters to integrate climate change considerations into all relevant areas of economic policy. The United States, however, has conspicuously failed to do so with regard to international trade negotiations. International trade agreements tend to increase GHG emissions due to the economic effects of trade liberalization, including increases in the scale of economic activity and changes in the composition of the affected economies. Trade agreements can also affect climate change in less quantifiable but potentially more significant ways by restricting the ability of governments to implement measures designed to mitigate climate change. Trade and investment rules in U.S. trade agreements have already been invoked to challenge a number of policies relevant to climate change, ranging from renewable energy programs to the Obama administration’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Yet despite the growing evidence of the relevance of trade policy to climate change, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) largely ignores potential climate impacts when preparing environmental reviews of proposed trade agreements as required under Executive Order 13141. This Article explores how the USTR could address climate change within the environmental review process to both assess the potential economically driven and regulatory impacts of proposed trade agreements for climate change and identify options for mitigating those impacts.

A Pragma-Dialectical Approach to Trade Friction Discourse: A Case Study of a Public Letter in Sino-US Trade Friction on Tire Special Safeguard

Based on the analytical framework ofStrategic Maneuvering, this paper analyzes andevaluates the public letter from China Chamberof Commerce of Metals, Minerals & ChemicalsImporters & Exporters (CCCMC) and China RubberIndustry Association (CRIA) to Obama andUnited States Trade Representative (USTR) onJuly 27th, 2009 to reveal the discursivestrategies and their corresponding linguisticrealizations manipulated in tire special safeguardcase. The research results show that, strategicmaneuvering in CCCMC & CRIA’s public lettersis integratedly realized through choice of topicalpotential, catering for audience demands andchoice of presentational devices, which issupported by such argumentative strategies aspresupposition, contrast, appeal to audience'svalues, appeal to authority, vagueness,repetition, statistics, appeal to opponent ’ sconcession, and the like. CCCMC & CRIA’s publicletter has its shortcomings in clarification ofdifference of opinion in the confrontation stage,in choice of starting in the opening stage, inchoice of topics in the argumentation stage andin manipulation of such specific argumentativerhetoricstrategies as ‘contrast’ and ‘statistics’.In view of China’s merits and deficiency, Chinashould: (1) clarify the confrontation, opening,argumentation and concluding stages of theargumentative discourse and flexibly set thedialectic and rhetoric aims of these four stagesaccording to the context; (2) strategicallymaneuver among topical potential, audiencedemand and presentational devices, in line withthe established dialectic and rhetoric aims indifferent argumentative stages; (3) recognizethe institutional context of trade frictiondiscourse and the importance of languageexpression, and cultivate an assertive image.

Challenging the Use of Special 301 against Measures Promoting Access to Medicines: Options Under the WTO Agreements

In April 2014, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) listed India on its Special 301 Priority Watch List, following India’s refusal to grant a patent over the leukaemia drug Gleevec and its compulsory licensing of the cancer drug Nexavar. USTR also undertook an out-of-cycle review of India’s intellectual property laws, to determine whether or not to upgrade India to the more serious Priority Foreign Country status, which would potentially trigger retaliation through withdrawal of Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) benefits. In response, India threatened to take the USA to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) Dispute Settlement Body over Special 301. This article examines whether such a challenge to Special 301 in the WTO would succeed, both in the India context and more generally. It takes three lines of inquiry. The first is whether or not the Special 301 procedure violates the procedural obligations under Article 23 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). The second is whether or not any related withdrawal of GSP benefits would be in line with the Enabling Clause. Finally, the article examines whether there are substantive limitations on intellectual property protections under TRIPS which could be used to challenge the validity of Special 301. It concludes that some, but not all, aspects of Special 301 may be inconsistent with WTO obligations.

Challenging the Use of the US Special 301 Procedures against Developing Country Access to Medicines Policies - Indian Pharmaceutical Patents and the WTO

In April 2014, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) listed India on its Special 301 Priority Watch List, following India’s refusal to grant a patent over the leukemia drug Gleevec and its compulsory licensing of the cancer drug Nexavar. USTR also undertook an out-of-cycle review of India’s intellectual property laws, to determine whether or not to upgrade India to the more serious Priority Foreign Country status, which would potentially trigger retaliation through withdrawal of GSP benefits. In response, India threatened to take the United States to the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Body over Special 301. This article examines whether such a case would succeed, taking three lines of inquiry. The first is whether or not the Special 301 procedure violates the procedural obligations under article 23 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). The second is whether or not any related withdrawal of GSP benefits would be in line with the Enabling Clause. Finally, the article examines whether there are substantive limitations on intellectual property protections under TRIPS which could be used to challenge the validity of Special 301. It concludes that some, but not all, aspects of Special 301 may be inconsistent with WTO obligations.

Explaining Software Piracy using a New Set of Indicators

Previous literature has used common aggregated indices as a proxy for intellectual property rights (IPR) institutional quality to assess their importance in determining piracy rates. The main contribution of this study is to empirically assess the relative importance of IPR institutional developments by differentiating between provision of laws protecting IPRs and their enforcement. These are observed through a factor analysis comprising different variables reflecting the copyright related laws, regulations, and agreements executed by 85 member countries of the WTO in addition to other economic and institutional characteristics of these countries. Using cross-country software piracy rates as a proxy for IPR violations from 1994 to 2010, our results indicate that per capita income, individualism, literacy, internet spread, the number of IPR laws and agreements in a country, and judicial independence significantly determine the level of a nation’s software piracy rates. On the other hand, international threats by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) do not have a significant impact on the prevailing piracy situation.

International Trade Law and Information Policy: A Recent History

In September 2008, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced the United States’ intention to join Singapore, New Zealand, Brunei, and Chile in what was then called the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, a preferential trade agreement. Since then, the agreement has grown in scope and ambition. The negotiations to create what is now known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have expanded to include seven other nations. The USTR wants the TPP to be “an ambitious, next-generation, Asia-Pacific trade agreement that reflects U.S. economic priorities and values.” According to the USTR's webpage dedicated to the agreement, the administration is “working in close partnership with Congress and with a wide range of stakeholders, in seeking to conclude a strong agreement that addresses the issues that U.S. businesses and workers are facing in the 21st century.”

Graduated Response American Style: 'Six Strikes' Measured Against Five Norms

In 2008, in recognition of the DMCA’s inadequacy in the face of P2P file sharing, and with the high-profile case of Arista Records v. Lime Group pending in federal district court in New York, then New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began pressuring broadband providers to agree voluntarily to play a greater role in fighting online infringement. Subsequently, the Obama administration, represented nationally by the Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) and internationally by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), expressly endorsed the concept of privately negotiated anti-piracy collaborations between corporate rights owners and broadband providers. In July of 2011, broadband providers finally bowed to the mounting political pressure and to changing economic realities in the business of corporate content ownership and delivery. Five of the largest telecommunications companies in the United States entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with trade groups representing major corporate copyright owners. The MOU creates what the parties characterize as a common framework of ‘best practices’ to effectively alert subscribers, protect copyrighted content and promote access to legal online content.This Article is an assessment of the MOU's Copyright Alert System (CAS) with respect to five norms that are central to consumer protection in the enterprise of online copyright enforcement: freedom of expression, privacy, fairness, proportionality, and transparency. Part I provides an introduction to graduated response, which is the genus of online copyright enforcement to which CAS belongs. Part II takes a comparative look at two pre-existing graduated response systems: the government mandated and administered program in France, Hadopi, and a privately administered program in Ireland run by the broadband provider Eircom. Part III provides a detailed overview of CAS, including the structure by which it is governed, the division of labor it prescribes between copyright owners and broadband providers, the progression of warnings and sanctions it implements, and the appeals process it makes available for affected broadband subscribers. Part IV evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of CAS with respect to each of the five norms listed above, using the systems in France and Ireland as reference points.

Review: The North American Idea A Vision of a Continental Future

THE NORTH AMERICAN IDEA A Vision of A Continental Future Robert A. Pastor New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 288pp, US$24.g5 (doth). ISBN 978-0199782413In June 2001, two Roberts met at the office of the United States trade representative in Washington, DC. One was President George W. Bush's new hard-charging, internationalist United States trade representative, Robert Zoellick, now president of the World Bank. The other was Robert Pastor of Emory University, himself no shrinking violet in intellectual combat. It seemed an auspicious time for such a meeting. At Zoellick's initiative, the Bush administration was poised to breathe new life into a US trade agenda that had stalled since the completion of NAFTA and GATT's Uruguay round in 1994. Pastor was one of the best-known scholars on North American integration and had just completed a new manuscript on the topic. After a discussion with Zoellick and his staff about the American trade agenda, including the pursuit of fast-track authority on which subject Pastor remains the expert), the two Roberts parted ways.At the time of the meeting, I was a doctoral student and intern in the trade representative's office of the Americas, working mainly on North American issues. In early July, a draft manuscript of Pastor's book made its way to my office. Zoellick had requested that someone read it and prepare a summary. The job was quickly delegated to me.The staff seized this opportunity to keep their intern busy for several days. In Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New (2001), Pastor argued that the US could learn many important lessons - many of them negative - from European economic integration. The postwarimperatives ofrecovery and security had initially driven Europe's experiment, which subsequently became a victim of its own success. Over time, sclerotic decision-making within the EU's supranational structures came to overwhelm the benefits of trade liberalization, labour mobility, and a common currency.By contrast, NAFTA left North America incomplete. The agreement had stimulated enormous economic activity and deepened ties among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. But the continent's potential remained unrealized because no governance structures had been established to manage it. Over-governance in Europe undermined competitiveness, but under-governance in North America generated a paralysis of its own. Pastor's book both explained how North America had evolved and prophesied what it could become. Even as it warned of the dangers of EU-style governance, it also charted possible paths toward greater trilateral cooperation, culminating in a customs or monetary union.Although Pastor acknowledged that these efforts would have a uniquely North American flavour rooted in the history and culture of each nation, he quickly attracted withering criticism from nationalist critics in all three countries, including both television pundits such as CNN's Lou Dobbs and antiglobalization street protestors. Given that the antiglobalization movement reached its zenith in 2001, Toward a North American Community had trouble attracting widespread support.His latest book, The North American Idea, offers a vision of what North America could be. It offers concrete proposals and impassioned advocacy in abundance. The North American prescription did not change significantly over the decade that elapsed between this book and its predecessor. …

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: a threat to affordable medicines and public health

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: a threat to affordable medicines and public health

Politics, Piracy and Punishment: Copyright Protection in the Arabian Gulf

In May of each year, two leading organizations monitoring the ongoing status of global standards of copyright protection issue their regular annual reports, namely the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and the US‐founded international software watchdog/lobby organization, the Business Software Alliance (BSA). Both reports encompass the Middle East region and the Arabian Gulf states specifically. This article examines the performance of the Arabian Gulf states, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, in developing and establishing their copyright protection regimes, in light of the these two reports. It does so in the context of the challenges faced by the Gulf states in the context of their membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and their compliance with the WTO's Agreement on Trade‐Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The article discusses the USTR's, 2010 Special 301 Report and the BSA's Seventh Annual BSA/IDC Global Software Piracy Study for 2010 as two authoritative benchmarks of the Arab Gulf states' performance in regional copyright protection. It suggests that, notwithstanding the development and enforcement challenges, both reports deliver a positive report to the region and to most of the Gulf states.

The Hegemonic Role of the United States in the U.S.-China Copyright Disputes

This paper examines the U.S. hegemonic role in imposing its copyright standards onto the Chinese, who hold fundamentally different cultural perceptions of copyright in terms of innovation, fair use, and the public domain. A thematic analysis of the transcripts of 45 in-depth interviews of the Chinese copyright holders and consumers via the theoretical lens of hegemony reveals the following. To obtain bigger market access and better protection of its intellectual property rights (IPR), the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has been coercive in universalizing its IPR standards and policies by establishing an internal interagency mechanism and an external network. The study suggests that both the United States and China need to adopt the golden mean to realize the goals of its respective copyright laws.

The USTR Special 301 Reports: an analysis of the US hegemonic pressure upon the organizational change in China's IPR regime

This study examines the US hegemonic pressure upon the organizational change in China's intellectual property rights (IPR) regime. Through the theoretical lens of the hegemony theory, the paper has analyzed the Special 301 Reports by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) from 2000 to 2007 via theme analysis and achieved four research results. First, it is the shared notion of the United States to integrate China into the Agreement of Trade‐Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) by upgrading and restructuring China's IPR regime so as to better protect the US IPR and obtain greater Chinese market access. Second, China has to make repeated compromises in reforming its IPR regime due to the increasing US pressure and domestic needs. Third, by controlling the international IPR institutions, the United States has successfully generated broad consent among even disadvantaged countries like China to continue updating their IPR regime in US terms. Finally, despite initial reluctance, China has gradually established, restructured, and updated its IPR regime and shown promising signs to take IPR seriously, which needs to be taken into consideration in the future US‐China IPR negotiations.