Essential Changes Needed to the USMCA to Remove Impediments to Public Health
The mandatory USMCA review is a rare opportunity to align trade policy with the realities of public health, regional resilience, and economic justice.
Keeping Big Pharma Out of Trade
Big Pharma has hijacked “trade” agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to expand their monopoly power and keep medicine prices high. The renegotiated NAFTA deal that Trump signed at the end of 2018 would have required governments to guarantee 10 years of data exclusivity for biologic drugs. This would have locked the United States into our bad policies that keep these medicines, including critical cancer treatments, outrageously expensive and export our failed system to Mexico and Canada. Before it was signed into law, congressional Democrats, unions and civil society groups forced Trump to reopen the 2018 NAFTA deal to remove Big Pharma giveaways and strengthen labor and environmental terms.
