The Following Content Has Been Provided by:Bob Unruh

An expert has explained, in an online commentary, that President Donald Trump now has an opportunity to fix what Rep. Nancy Pelosi broke in America’s trade agenda during his first term.

It is Andrei Iancu, who helped negotiate trade deals during Trump’s first term, who explained what Pelosi damaged, and how a fix could be in the works now.

It was during work on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a plan that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement, that the damage happened, he said.

And he noted a fix is possible soon, as the three nations soon are to meet to discuss how it is working.

He explained there had been a provision protecting drug manufacturers in America from knockoffs created by overseas competitors in the original plan.

But “that provision designed to reduce foreign freeloading was stripped from the agreement at the insistence of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose support was necessary to pass the USMCA’s implementing legislation through Congress,” he explained.

Trump’s administration, he said, now could push for the restoration of the original provisions during the coming discussions, he said.

The benefits for Americans are obvious: “Strengthening regulatory data protection in our neighbors would end the freeloading and help bring lower prices to American patients,” he said.

It would be, he said, “a political and economic victory.”

“During the first Trump administration, as under secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, I worked on the intellectual property aspects of that pact,” Iancu explained.

“The president, U.S. Trade Representative Bob Lighthizer, and the rest of the team secured numerous concessions from our northern and southern neighbors to strengthen intellectual property (IP) protections — which help prevent foreign rivals from stealing technologies and designs from innovative American companies, reduce foreign free-riding on America’s investment in innovation and incentivize American firms to boost their research spending and expand into foreign markets.”

The biggest issue, however, was “a requirement that Mexico and Canada offer 10 years of ‘regulatory data protection’ to cutting-edge biologic medicines grown from living cell cultures.”

That is what Pelosi cut out of the plan, he said.

It is during that time period that rival companies aren’t allowed to use the clinical trial data of a biologic developer to create their own “knockoff” products, he said.

Those protections allow innovators to recoup their development investments, which often are costly, and that “incentivizes them to pour more resources into research and development, creating research and manufacturing jobs in the process,” he said.

Trump’s goal at the time was straightforward: “Raise protections abroad, so that foreign manufacturers can’t free ride on American biotech inventors by prematurely introducing knockoff products,” he said.

He said support was needed from Pelosi, then House speaker, for the legislation to move forward, and she refused to allow the protections for American companies.

“Now, though, there’s a new Congress. The second Trump administration would be wise to push for the original terms, which Canada and Mexico had already agreed to, during the upcoming USMCA review,” he wrote.

“Stronger intellectual property protections would mean more new treatments for patients — at lower prices for Americans — along with more high-paying jobs in the industries of the future, and continued leadership in critical 21st-century industries for the United States.”