PRESS CONFERENCE: 400+ U.S. Organizations Call on Biden Administration to Stop Blocking COVID-19 WTO Waiver to Boost Vaccines, Treatments Worldwide

Transcript and Link to Video of 2/26/21 Event Featuring:

U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.)
U.S. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)
U.S. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)
Sara Nelson, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA
Paul Farmer, Partners In Health
Sr. Simone Campbell, SSS, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
Abby Maxman, Oxfam America
Yuan Qiong Hu, Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
Akshaya Kumar, Human Rights Watch
Brook Baker, Health GAP
Lori Wallach, Public Citizen (moderator)

Read the letter here.
[Click on image to start video, transcript below]

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Hello, everybody. I am Lori Wallach from Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. Welcome and thanks both to the speakers and the press for joining this press conference to release a letter with 400 prominent U.S. civil society organizations calling on the Biden administration to stop blocking the emergency COVID-19 waiver of World Trade Organization intellectual property monopolies that are now imposed on all 159 WTO member nations. This WTO TRIPS waiver, as it’s officially called, is a critical first step in boosting production of vaccines and treatments and tests worldwide. The Trump administration led a very small group of WTO members in blocking this important public health initiative. Unfortunately, in the first two meetings of WTO committee since the Biden administration arrived, the U.S. position has not changed. The groups in the letter are urging the U.S. to support the waiver and help win the race against time to greatly increase the production of vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests to get access to everyone everywhere to crush the COVID-19 pandemic. Public Citizen joined with Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and Health GAP to draft this letter. And our thanks to the Citizens Trade Campaign for helping organize outreach and sign-on. Before we turn to our speakers, I just want to note that urging the Biden administration to join the 100 plus countries in support of this waiver at the WTO are many diverse and powerful groups from democratic campaigning groups like Indivisible and MoveOn, Our Revolution and People’s Action the Sunrise Movement, online groups like Avaaz and Demand Progress, dozens of national unions, scores of faith denominations from the Episcopalians and Lutherans and Presbyterians and Methodists, Quakers Church of Christ and many different Catholic sisters and brothers, Amnesty International Human Rights Watch National Environmental and consumer groups. It’s the whole family urging the Biden administration to get on the right side of history with this waiver. And we are honored today to be joined by several members of Congress who are leading the efforts to get the administration to support the critical WTO TRIPS waiver. And I am honored to first introduce our first speaker, Congressman Earl Blumenauer, a member of congress representing Oregon’s third district, a Democrat, elected in 1996, who also is the chair of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on trade, Congressman Blumenauer.

Rep. Blumenauer (D-Ore.) 

Thank you, Lori. It’s an honor to be with you this morning. And to join with my dear colleague, Jan Schakowsky, we had a lot of fun working with NAFTA 2.0, tackling some of the unnecessary protections for the pharmaceutical industry. And this is a logical next step. We are all in this together we’ve heard. Well, I’ve been pleased with the Biden administration being on the ground and reversing so many of the disastrous policies that they could, with the Trump administration standing in the way of getting medicines to deal with this global pandemic. As a global community, we must come together use every tool at our disposal to stop the pandemic. We’ve seen the World Trade Organization intellectual property rules. In fact, frankly, a little corporate greed in there have disastrous impact on public health during past epidemics. And we must make sure that this doesn’t happen again. By rejoining the World Health Organization, to prioritizing global collaboration. The Biden administration has already shown that we are in this together with our allies. They understand that a deadly pandemic does not stop at one border. The waiver is the next critical step. We need to work to ensure that trade rules do not stump, the developing world’s access to vaccines, treatment and diagnostic tests. It’s clear that that must be the next step. It is literally a matter of life and death. I’m proud today to join the faith, health development, labor, human rights and other civil groups on this important call to action. It’s the right thing to do not only for our country, but for the entire world sending a signal that we are going to do what we need to get life-saving medicines to deserving people around the world. And I’m honored to be with this outstanding lineup of advocates. Thank you very, very much.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Thank you very much, Congressman Blumenauer. It’s now my honor to introduce Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who is a democrat representing Illinois ninth district since 1999. She is a Senior Chief Deputy Whip, and she is also the Chair of the Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee of the House Commerce Committee. Congresswoman Schakowsky, please.

U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)

Thank you, Lori. And I think all the people who are on this call and the hundreds of organizations around the world really that are joining into this cause, I do want to say just give a plug for the Jewish community. I know we are also on that list of religious organizations that are supporting this. And I wanted to say a special thank you to Earl Blumenauer, we’re also very lucky to have him leading us and his and his wisdom. And he also serves as the Chair of the Subcommittee on trade, from the Ways and Means Committee, which is very, very important. So thank you, thank you, Earl. So we really have vaccine apartheid in this world right now. And we know that the pharmaceutical companies and some of the rich countries have been standing in the way of making sure that all of us because we are all in it together. And if the virus is flourishing anywhere, humans are at risk everywhere. So we have a huge self-interest in making sure that we provide the opportunity for developing and poor countries to be able to get the vaccine, which is not happening now. Right now, the richer countries have a majority percent of all of the COVID-related drugs we’re talking about not only the vaccines, but also the various medicines that can help. And we have been there before we’ve seen how an HIV AIDS pandemic that we were not there when we needed to be for the continent of Africa. And, and so I think it is very important. We have already seen, there was a lawyer who represented the pharmaceutical industry who said, “Well, these companies were talking about the pharmaceutical companies don’t do this out of the goodness of their heart, they have to be motivated.” Well, let’s remember that taxpayers, U.S. taxpayers have already spent billions of dollars in research and development. Certainly, we understand and applaud them for the quick development of the vaccine, but right now, we need to proceed as an international community and make sure that the TRIPS waiver which is supported by 100 plus countries around the world is ratified at the World Trade Organizations. This week. We members of Congress are sending a letter. Right now, we have about 30 signers, but we’re leaving it open for next week. But we’re going to send a letter today asking the President of the United States this does not take an act of Congress to approve the TRIPS waiver. And we look forward to working with all of the allies, the countries, the civil society organizations, to make sure that this happens to keep us all safe in this world. If we’re going to crush the virus, we absolutely need to stand with the waiver and hopefully, we will see next week at the WTO conference that that will happen. So I’m happy to be with all of you. And I yield back.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Thank you very much Congresswoman Schakowsky and for your leadership and that of Congressman Blumenauer. It is now my honor to introduce Sarah Nelson. She is the president of the American Flight Attendants Association, CWA Communication Workers of America. She’s the vice president of CWA. Sarah.

Sara Nelson, President, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA

Thank you so much, Lori, I really appreciate being here. And of course, you are always at the forefront of making sure that we are pushing, pushing, pushing to do the right thing. For as many people as possible. I just can’t thank you enough for your work. And, of course, it’s also always exciting to be with my friends, Congressman Earl Blumenauer, and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, and of course, they’re at the forefront of this fight. Listen, I am proud to be here standing in solidarity with great faith, public health, human rights advocates in supporting the fix to WTO rules so that we don’t leave Big Pharma in control of how COVID vaccines, treatments and diagnostics tests are made, here and everywhere. Flight attendants know firsthand how devastating this pandemic has been for not only our health, but also our economy. And the simple reality is that until the pandemic is under control, there’s no way that air travel or any other impacted industry will get back to normal. We know in unions that an injury to one is an injury to all and it’s simply the truth that as long as one person can be infected, we are all at risk. So, we need the vaccines, the tests the treatments everywhere, it’s time to temporarily waive the WTO rules on intellectual property so that countries around the world have the production capacity that can hinder access to formulas, technologies, and scale up the production. And I’ll say it again, people should always come before Big Pharma and profits, even more so during a deadly pandemic. Look, this is in all of our interests. If we continue, as we are, we are simply will not be enough supply of vaccines treatments for tests and under current conditions. Most people in developing countries may not be able to get the vaccines until 2024. I can I get a little choked up thinking about that. Because I know firsthand, flight attendants fly to every corner of the earth. A lot of people can only dream of crossing borders. We know how close our world is. We use the phrase “worlds away,” but the truth is that we are connected. And as long as anyone is in jeopardy anywhere, we’re all in jeopardy. Imagining that this could go on till 2024 is also a threat to our livelihood. And our jobs and people are hurting everywhere. It’s simply cannot go on. So we stand with you and everyone on this call and we’ll do everything we can to make sure that these vaccines can get to every area of this earth as quickly as possible. We will deliver the vaccines, we will help to promote to providing them and we have to do this before the variants of the vaccine continue to mutate and get to a place where the current vaccines that we have are no longer able to control the pandemic itself. So we’re in a race against time. And we’re with you all the way. Thanks, Lori.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Thank you very much Sarah Nelson and I will now un-mangle the union that she is the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, AFA CWA Thank you very much. It is now my honor to introduce Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, he is a medical doctor who chairs the Department of Global Health at Harvard Medical School. Paul Farmer, please.

Paul Farmer, Co-Founder, Partners In Health

Thank you so much, Lori, and thank you Congresswoman Schakowsky for, as usual standing on the right side of history. I am not an expert in either trade agreements nor intellectual property. But I am. I do have some expertise after 30 years of responding to epidemic disease and pandemics as an infectious disease clinician. And I just like to mention that, you know, we have, obviously, very deep experience of vaccine apartheid. But also, as said, diagnostic and therapeutic apartheid, or suggested that we need to focus on all of the tools that we need to respond. I just want to look for a couple of optimistic points. One of them is to look back at recent history, as we’ve been called to do, with HIV. When I started medical school back in the 80s, HIV was rapidly becoming the number one killer of adults, men and women in the United States and in Haiti. And I spent and still spend my time between these two places between Harvard and Haiti. And on the one hand, at Harvard, when we discovered as I was just finishing my training, that a three-drug regimen or a multi-drug regimen of antiretrovirals, would suppress HIV, we were begging our patients in the Harvard teaching hospitals to take these medications. Meanwhile, in Haiti, our patients were begging us for access to them. This is another form again, of therapeutic apartheid, right? If you’ve experienced it as an individual clinician, it’s very painful to go from Harvard to Haiti and ask yourself, what do we say to our patients, their people like Tony Fauci broke this impasse, by focusing on therapeutic equity and bringing it transnationally. And a number of initiatives that have emerged in the last 20 years, including the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, have really shown us how to engage with the problem or the challenge of intellectual property in a meaningful way, and bring millions of people on board into medical modernity. That is exactly the situation we face right now, the difference being we cannot afford, as Jan said, we cannot afford that delay between the development of new technologies and their widespread and equitable distribution. So the challenge that we now face is to learn the lessons from previous efforts to promote global solidarity around health and social justice. And to speed up the process by which we can distribute these drugs as has been clear, and as many organizations signing on to this letter have pointed, the TRIPS waiver is critical to this. We still have Tony Fauci on our side, who has argued about the moral responsibility, we have to make sure that intellectual patents don’t prevent the rapid rollout not only of vaccines, but of diagnostics and therapeutics. And I would mention that in briefings, including ones that Congresswoman Schakowsky has organized queries of the major pharma companies about waivers like this, only Moderna said they were not hostile to or oppose the idea of the waiver. And I think we need to continue our engagement and think a lot about the map of opposition to this waiver. If you look at the map of opposition, it’s largely a north-south divide again, it’s also a post-colonial divide with North Europe, United States, alas, among them, being opposed to the south all 55 member states that African Union have signed on to a waiver like this, and we need to stand as you said Lori on the right side of history. Finally, I would just add, that if you look at a country like Rwanda, it is clear to me after many, many years of experience there, and luckily, Congresswoman Schakowsky and others on this call have also had the chance to spend time there. It’s clear to me that they can do both a vaccine rollout, respond to epidemics and consider manufacturing of the diagnostics, therapeutics and preventives that we need. I hope we will all come together and end up on the right side of history. Thank you very much. I yield.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Thank you very much, Dr. Farmer. It is my honor to introduce Sister Simone Campbell. SSS, Sisters of Social Service. She is the executive director of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice. And she is herself and her organization, the leaders of the creative Nuns on the Bus initiative. Sister Simone, please.

Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice

Thank you so much, Lori. It’s such an honor to be here and to lift up together the various perspectives on why it’s so important to ensure that this waiver is granted. I, as a Catholic sister, know that every faith tradition makes clear that we on our planet are a single people. The COVID-19 pandemic has made that crystal clear that all of us, all peoples, all nations are together in the struggle to tame the virus. We rejoice that governments and wealthy nations invested successfully in research resulting in several vaccines. But these vaccines cannot be hoarded for the sake of profit. No, that is wrong. Pope Francis reminds us, “Just as the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life today, we must say, ‘Thou shalt not to an economy of exclusion, such an economy kills.’” That is exactly what will happen if we do not get the waiver to the WTO provisions, morality and practicality demand that the vaccine be shared with all on this planet. This is a moment where the hoarding of vaccines and the desire to maximize profit are wrong, are immoral, and must be stopped. The United States must stop blocking the WTO TRIPS waiver in order to share the vaccine with the developing world and to prevent the killing of our vulnerable, so siblings in the developing world. Now, if we don’t get the waiver, we in the United States, I believe will have blood on our hands, and we cannot allow that to happen. Let’s change this. Thank you, Lori.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Thank you very much, Sister Simone. It is now my honor to introduce Abby Maxman the president and CEO of Oxfam America. Abby.

Abby Maxman 

Thank you so much, Lori, and Congresswoman Schakowsky, and all of those with us today. For those of you who don’t know us, Oxfam is a global non-governmental organization dedicated to ending poverty, inequality and injustice throughout the world. We are at a pivotal moment and the COVID-19 pandemic, as others have already said, and thanks to brilliant scientists in the public and private sectors, we now have multiple effective vaccines. But the distribution of those vaccines is vastly unequal, which threatens to prolong the devastation we’re seeing all around us here in the U.S. and around the world. Now, right now, just a handful of giant pharmaceutical corporations have monopoly control over the life-saving technologies we all need. They control how many doses are produced, where they are manufactured and sold, and at what price. Now, this has created a vast chasm of inequality. With only 4% of the world’s population, the U.S. has bought up almost 50% of Pfizer’s total expected supply in 2021. According to UNICEF, 130 countries have yet to administer a single dose of a vaccine. as others have said this inequality is a moral, public health and economic disaster. Rather than slicing the existing pie of vaccines even more finally, we need to share the recipe so that we have enough for everyone. We need a people’s vaccine, a vaccine that is free to everyone around the world that is fairly distributed based on need and not on nationality or ability to pay. And that it is a global public good with shared technology that can leverage the full extent of the world’s manufacturing capacity. President Biden has an opportunity to lead right now to make this vision a reality. Under President Trump, the U.S. failed to use a key tool to produce more doses more quickly by blocking a proposal supported by more than 100 countries. President Biden should support the proposed WTO mechanism to waive TRIPS monopoly protections that will enable generic manufacturer and widespread distribution of life-saving vaccines, as others have already said, COVID anywhere is COVID everywhere. This is a key step to make us all safer. I yield.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Thank you very much. Abby Maxman president of Oxfam. It’s now my honor to introduce Yuan Hu she is with Doctors Without Borders, Médecins Sans Frontières, and she is a senior legal and policy analyst who’s written a lot about this issue around the world. Yuan, please.

Yuanqiong Hu, Policy Co-coordinator, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Access Campaign

Thank you very much. It’s my honor to join this panel and calling for the support on not blockage from the U.S. And to this very landmark waiver proposal, my organization has been following and supporting the issue support. It is submitted by India and South Africa. As a huge international medical humanitarian organization, Doctors Without Borders has been responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in more than 60 countries from last year. So our health care workers on the frontlines, most of them working in developing countries are experiencing the first-hand challenges of securing sufficient supply of all medical tools. Recently, as some other panelists mentioned, the new mutation of the virus are hovering cells in African country where MSF works, that frontline health workers, including MSF team, are still struggling to secure the priority access to vaccines, largely due to the constraints of supply at a global level. So we are looking into interconnected words, and then the collective responsibility for all governments to really step in making sure they use their power, rightly, support the people and support everybody to work out pandemic together. In these regards, my organization truly support this waiver proposal, because we think these provide a very important additional policy and legal option that can empower governments to help themselves and collaborate share their response, and there’s a capacity in production and supply without a solely relying on pharmaceutical companies within this. And so we’re looking into the equality situation now in ensuring vaccines. But we also need other tools rapidly and sufficiently available for therapeutics, diagnostics, and others so people can get protected, because now it is never clearer than ever. If we leave any population unprotected, the longer the situation like that, the more likely we are facing that the virus is going to become more complicated to control. So in this regard, we’re very happy to join the other civil society organization in the U.S. And we are very encouraging to see the new administration, the new approach to global health. And we think there’s a possibility for all governments to stand together and stand at the right side of history and prioritize people’s life over monopoly. Thank you.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Thank you very much, Yuan Hu, Doctors Without Borders, MSF, it’s my honor to now introduce Akshaya Kumar, who’s with Human Rights Watch. She is the Director of Crisis Advocacy. Akshaya, place.

Akshaya Kumar, Director of Crisis Advocacy and Special Projects, Human Rights Watch

Thank you, Lori. Today, more than 225 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered across 100 countries. And in the United States. Now more Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine than Americans who have tested positive. This is really news to celebrate. But at the same time, as we’ve heard from the panel discussion today, these vaccines are not available in much of the rest of the world. In fact, Ghana just got its first delivery of COVID-19 vaccines this week through the COVAX facility, but dozens of countries around the world have yet to receive even a single dose. And so it’s my honor to speak on behalf of Human Rights Watch and add our voice to that of political leaders like Representative Schakowsky face leaders, business leaders and health leaders in asking President Biden to end the obstruction that the U.S. government has taken to date and begin to support a waiver of the TRIPS agreement that wouldn’t just help developing countries it would help the world at large. I think it’s important to note that a study funded, for example, by the International Chambers of Commerce, which represents the interests of companies worldwide, has concluded that the current approach of vaccine inequity and the delays in developing and vaccinating the poorest in our world will actually cost the global economy up to $9.2 trillion. And half of that would be borne by advanced economies. So by opposing this TRIPS waiver, we’re actually shooting ourselves in the foot even on the count of trade. As Dr. Farmer mentioned, we’re now facing a race between the development and spread of new variants and the spread of vaccination. Even though we have made significant strides towards vaccination in the United States. Without vaccination across the world, none of us will be safe. If adopted, the temporary waiver would allow governments to mobilize medical manufacturing capacity around the world to mass-produce any safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, wider vaccination would save countless lives in the United States and abroad. In turn, it would also lead to a faster economic recovery, a prospect that we can’t ignore the importance of. Thank you.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Akshaya Kumar, thank you very much Akshaya Kumar from Human Rights Watch. It’s now my honor to introduce Brook Baker with Health GAP, and GAP being Global Access Project. And he is Brook is also a professor of law at Northeastern University. He also serves as the Senior Policy Analyst at Health GAP. Brook, please.

Brook Baker, Health GAP Senior Policy Analyst & Northeastern University Professor of Law

Thank you very much. So, I want to share first of all Health GAP is an AIDS activist organization. And Paul and others have referenced how much we learned from the AIDS movement about the centrality of having sufficient supplies and low prices, to galvanize a global response to a pandemic. When I first became active 20,000 people in Africa receive treatment. And now almost 20 years later, almost 20 million people are on treatments in Sub-Saharan Africa. And that’s because of activism that demanded that the intellectual property barriers that Big Pharma profited from were removed and the countries could access medicines. The same medicine that costs almost $50,000 per year in the U.S. right now is available in Sub-Saharan Africa for $65 per person. That’s the amount of profit that drug companies can extract because of their monopoly rights. We cannot have business as usual. We have business as usual for business and we have business as usual for government. And it is time for this administration to break with the past administration’s America first in America only policy with respect to the global aid, global coronavirus pandemic. I want to emphasize a little bit what IP allows the drug companies to do. It allows them to control the supply, who can make how much is made, they have total control because they have a monopoly right to exclude competitors. They can set the price and we just saw the story in the Globe today about the massive profits that both Pfizer and Moderna expect this coming year would because of their sales of their vaccine. And even more perniciously they can control distribution, they get to decide who they sell to. And they preferentially sell to rich countries, and rich and even to some extent rich people in rich countries. And the result is that other people are left behind all our brothers and sisters globally. At this point, 5 billion-plus just to achieve herd immunity are being left behind because we are engaging in business as usual. It is just outrageous to suggest that intellectual property does not constrict our ability to respond to this pandemic. None of these companies can presently make sufficient quantities of their vaccines or medicines or diagnostics to supply global demand, which global demand meaning billions of people indeed, and for them to sit on their formulas and to sit on their intellectual property rights and their trade secrets and tell us that technology transfer is impossible and that they’ll never be able to make another medicine if their rights are temporarily suspended, is just outrageous. So I think the purpose of this press call is really to emphasize the fact that the U.S. is now standing in the way of supply that will be needed globally, but will also benefit this domestically. If we simply as many people have said, we cannot be safe from the effects of intellectual property monopolies until they are removed in all companies, countries, and all people have access to these medicines. Thank you very much.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Thank you very much, Brook Baker. It is now my honor to introduce Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro. Congresswoman DeLauro is representing the third district of Connecticut. She is the chair of the Appropriations Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives and has been one of the most passionate and consistent leaders for fair trade in Congress. Congresswoman DeLauro, please.

U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)

Thank you, thank you so much, and what an honor to join with all of you. And what an unbelievable mission. This is because we see every single day that this virus knows no borders, there are no borders here. And you may have said all of this, but I have to say it as well, and not bringing the pandemic to an abrupt end is the highest global priority that we have. So, therefore, I’ll get to what my conclusion is about this is that the U.S. must reverse its position at the WTO we need to support the waiver from India and South Africa in order to be able to help our allies toward ending this pandemic. You know, it just makes unbelievable sense that the waiver proposed by Indian South Africa lifts the barriers here and allows countries to locally manufacture. I mean, why would we be wanting to stand in the way of assisting and saving people’s lives? That is what is underlying all of this. It’s not a bureaucratic, mechanical fix, intellectual property, whatever you want to deal with bureaucracy, it is saving lives. And, you know, we prise lives in the U.S., why aren’t we doing that in India and in South Africa and in the other countries so that they can save their people they want to do it. And as this virus inflicts damage to us and around the globe of this is paramount, you know, we need to be a leader in this fight, the United States needs to be a leader in this fight, we shouldn’t come kicking and screaming to the solution and an immediate solution to this. We know about equitable access to vaccinations, and how essential that is, we are dealing with that in our own country, and we have access, my God, we’re just trying to up the supply, so that we can get to everyone give everybody else a fair chance on making sure that they can get there as well. You know, when you bring things to market, and this has been true over the past decade, each of the drugs was developed in the interest of a greater good, that greater good is to alleviate pain, to improve health, and as I said, to save lives. And that’s true, that’s what we’ve been doing over and over again, with every new medication, why not with the opportunity with the COVID-19 therapeutics and the vaccines, they are no different. We have invested billions of dollars to expedite the research, let us make it available. Let us open the doors and let other countries do what we want to try to do, and to save people in our country. That’s their mission. And so my hope is, is that the administration will move forward and that we will allow for this waiver for India and South Africa. Thank you. Thank you for letting me participate.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch 

Thank you, Congresswoman DeLauro. Hear, hear what she said. So I would like to now turn us to question and answers please.