Governments, including the U.S. government, gave billions of our tax dollars to a few pharmaceutical giants to develop and distribute COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. These corporations then used intellectual property monopolies to limit production and access and made tens of billions in windfall profits on COVID-19.  The World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) rules and similar rules in free trade agreements are the opposite of “free trade.” They require governments to issue class rent-seeking monopoly patent licenses to pharmaceutical corporations, which lets these corporations then limit supply and charge high prices.  (Cue free trade philosopher Adam Smith and David Ricardo rolling in their graves to have such terms in what are branded “free trade agreements.”)

A temporary COVID emergency WTO TRIPS waiver was critical, so that the needed supplies of COVID vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests could have been produced in as many places and as quickly as possible. But almost two years after it was initially proposed by South Africa and India, the waiver was successfully blocked by three WTO members: the European Union, led by Germany, plus Switzerland and the UK. Instead of pushing its allies to get out of the way of the rest of the world, the U.S. government played a passive role after a landmark May 2021 announcement in support of a WTO waiver for COVID vaccines.  

Under the WTO’s undemocratic operating procedures, a waiver agreement cosponsored by 65 WTO member countries was never allowed onto the table for negotiation leading up to the WTO’s major decision-making “Ministerial Conference.” Instead, the WTO staff wrote a rump document that reflected the European pro-Pharma position. It did not waive intellectual property barriers and instead, added new restrictions relative to the existing WTO barriers against access to medicine. Unions and civil society organizations throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America called on their governments to reject this text. The Mexican Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion, Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez said: “For almost two years, a handful of rich countries have resisted a life-saving proposal tabled by India and South Africa that could speed up global COVID-19 vaccination, making a mockery of the World Trade Organization. Now, these countries are attempting to stitch up the process in order to put the profits of Big Pharma over people’s lives… Ahead of these meetings, a damaging new proposal has emerged that is being pushed by the European Union and WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. This proposal would be worse than none at all.”

At the WTO’s mid-June 2022 Ministerial Conference, the WTO staff railroaded through this sham text that had no country sponsors, instead of a waiver supported by more than 100 countries. This outcome was a dangerous public health failure that threatened us with more deadly COVID variants and more economic pain. It also was a vulgar display of the WTO’s demise when a few rich countries flacking for pharmaceutical corporations could get an assist from a global institution’s staff to block the will of 100-plus countries united to improve access to medicines in a deadly pandemic.

Then, in 2023, efforts to get modest permissions to cover access for COVID treatments and tests was also blocked by a few powerful countries fronting for Big Pharma interests.

Going forward, the failed WTO COVID waiver effort will escalate demands to eliminate the trade-pact intellectual property monopolies that block global access to essential vaccines and other medicines given the WTO legal mechanism designed for health emergencies failed entirely.