Globalization & Trade

February 22, 2013

Thanks for nothing

Christine Hines Access to Courts, Globalization & Trade

The U.S. stock market may have just lost a critical safeguard – accountability to investors. On Thursday, a panel at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), an industry-run group that regulates brokerage firms and exchange markets, disregarded its own policy, ruling that brokerage firm Charles Schwab and Company may insert class-action bans in its take-it-or-leave-it contracts with investors.

Schwab sought to capitalize on a recent corporate trend, following the 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, which permitted corporations to insert class-action bans within forced arbitration clauses in their one-sided contracts with consumers, investors and employees.

Forced arbitration clauses are used overwhelmingly by the securities and financial services industries. The practice deprives individuals of their right to seek redress in court. Studies and surveys on FINRA arbitration have shown that biases in favor of corporate entities and against weaker investors are evident in the private arbitration process.

Although limited to arbitration, investors who had similar claims against a broker-dealer could, under FINRA rules, band together in a single action in court against the firm. However, FINRA’s decision eliminates class actions, leaving serious claims such as fraud, unsuitable trading, breach of fiduciary duty and other securities law violations to be resolved in secret forums on an individual basis.
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January 10, 2013

Chamber plays Chicken Little (again)

Robert Weissman Access to Courts, Climate & Energy, Consumer & Worker Safeguards, Ethics and Lobbying Reform, Globalization & Trade, Open Government, Regulatory Safeguards

Note: Public Citizen runs U.S. Chamberwatch, a project designed to shed light on the funding and practices of the largest private interest lobbyist in America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue today delivered his annual State of American Business address. As he paints a fantastical picture of the unfair burdens imposed on Big Business, Donohue neglects to mention a few things, most importantly, that corporate profits are at record highs.

Of course, there’s nothing surprising here, since he gives pretty much the same speech every year. Still, a few comments are in order.

First, isn’t it a bit much for the rich and powerful to endlessly call for cutbacks in the nation’s leading anti-poverty programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? If Tom Donohue is concerned about the government’s fiscal situation, perhaps he should acknowledge the unreasonably low effective tax rate on corporations. Or declare that it’s outrageous for two dozen profitable Fortune 500 companies to pay zero in federal income tax in the past four years.

Second, he whines about a “coming flood of new regulations,” even as we still suffer from the Great Recession, a direct outgrowth of too little regulation and enforcement. This complaint comes despite no evidence that regulation meaningfully impedes job growth and despite lots of evidence that regulation protects and creates new jobs (not to mention making jobs safer, better paid and equitability available).

Third, he urges more NAFTA-style trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a NAFTA-on-steroids that would encumber every country on the Pacific Rim. This call will come despite an abundance of evidence that this trade model has cost jobs, lowered living standards and undermined our sovereign ability to set our own safety and health protections.
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July 20, 2012

We Can End AIDS: Join Us this Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Burcu Kilic Globalization & Trade, Health Care, Safe & Affordable Drugs & Devices, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized in the United States in 1981. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was identified soon after in 1983. By the mid-1980’s, the disease was recognized as an international epidemic which had spread throughout most of the world. Millions have lost their lives since.

Three decades later, we may finally have an opportunity to end AIDS.

This year, new science demonstrated that treatment can also be effective as HIV prevention. For the first time it is becoming possible to model an end to the epidemic. Activists’ calls for an AIDS-free generation have been echoed worldwide.

But ending AIDS will depend in part on massively scaling up access to treatment. A major obstacle is the monopoly power of the giant pharmaceutical companies.

In 2000, basic HIV treatment cost up to $15,000 per person, per year (ppy). In developing countries, treatment was out of reach for all but the very wealthy, and HIV was a death sentence.

Then, activists working together across borders and increasing availability of generic medicines facilitated a treatment revolution, eventually driving basic HIV medicine prices to under $150 ppy – a 99% cost reduction. Today, antiretroviral (ARV) medicines provide eight million people in low- and middle-income countries with long term hope for a healthy and long living future.

But millions more still await access, and lifelong AIDS treatment requires access to newer and more potent drug regimens, due to drug resistance.

Unfortunately, most newer ARVs are under the monopoly control of multinational pharmaceutical companies. The high treatment costs for these medicines threaten to block the remarkable progress already achieved and impede the goal of “getting to zero.”

To continue the treatment revolution and seek an end to AIDS, we need competition and access not only for off-patent ARVs but also for the patent-protected and very expensive second- and third-line ARVs. Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program is working with partners in more than one dozen countries to challenge Big Pharma’s monopoly abuses and realize this vision.

We are also fighting to protect access to medicines in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement under negotiation now between the United States and countries in Latin America and Asia. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has advanced a Big Pharma wish list that would lengthen, strengthen and broaden pharmaceutical monopolies throughout the region. We are inspiring governments and health advocates fight back.

We envision a very different Asia-Pacific region partnership–one that advances pharmaceutical access and innovation simultaneously. We believe better public policy is possible. We firmly hold to the promise of an “AIDS-free generation”. Getting there requires standing up to Big Pharma, promoting competition, and expanding access to medicines.

That’s why, this Tuesday Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program will join the We Can End AIDS March and ask for “accountability from Big Pharma and government officials around the world”.

We need your support to create a future free of AIDS. Please join us on Tuesday and let’s raise our voices against Big Pharma.

June 25, 2012

Les Nouvelles de Bruxelles : The Changing Politics of the Knowledge Economy

Burcu Kilic Consumer & Worker Safeguards, Digital Rights, Globalization & Trade, Open Government, Safe & Affordable Drugs & Devices, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

The politics of the global knowledge economy are shifting: from mercantilism to co-operation, from closed commercial regimes toward open source. Last week, the European Parliament Committee on International Trade (INTA) passed a report recommending the rejection of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Since the European Union (EU) and its 22 member states signed ACTA in January 2012, ACTA has caused nothing but consternation in Europe. Citizens of Poland, Bulgaria and the Germany took to the streets to show their opposition. These protests initiated a pan-European movement awakening the spirit of 1968. Young Europeans asked policy makers and politicians in Brussels to respect their rights, privacy and freedom on the Internet.

The ‘old continent’ woke up to what people in the global South have known and fought for over many years. Intellectual property (IP) is not merely a commercial or trade-related issue or something we can allow to be monopolized by corporations. It’s about us. It touches human life. IP rules can dictate how we access, disseminate and share knowledge, technology and information. They are not only about corporations and their interests. They are also about our internet freedom, privacy, scientific research, textbooks and journals, traditional and cultural knowledge, stewardship of biodiversity, arts and literature. The current orthodox IP standards, largely imposed by corporations, create exclusive controls over knowledge and information and have proved to be inadequate and frequently inappropriate in today’s knowledge-based economy.

What ACTA did – albeit inadvertently – was provide an impetus for a new vision of prioritizing people’s rights over IP fundamentalism in the 21^st century. In recent decades, there has been a rush to over-regulate this relatively new and rather conceptually confusing form of property. The IP maximalist perspectives create modern juridical bureaucracies; monstrous, absurd legal procedures and protocols. From the perspective of people, the over-aggressive rules pushed through agreements like ACTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are understood as a declaration of war threatening personal rights and freedoms on the Internet and in our daily lives. This is why the people of Europe raised their voice to warn policy makers in Brussels about the inadequacy of the current IP maximalist model, which places IP monopolies at its heart instead of sharing or disseminating knowledge, technology or information.

The ‘war against piracy’ turned into a revolution against the corporate internet. Brussels could not stay indifferent to the outcry. First, the Committee on Legal Affairs (Juri), Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) voted to express “opinions against ACTA”. If three strikes weren’t enough, a vote in the Development Committee gave a fourth. Finally, on June 21 the trade committee (INTA) dealt a serious blow to ACTA. The INTA vote shows that European politicians increasingly understand we, the people, will not let healthcare and internet policy be dictated by a very few outdated corporate interests. Rather, we need forward-looking, flexible policies for technology, knowledge and creative works that unleash our human genius. ACTA is a retrograde policing approach to the knowledge economy: it promotes IP fundamentalism, it treats competition like criminality and the internet as a threat.

We cannot count ACTA out yet. The final voting in the European Parliament will be held on the 4^th of July. The Fourth of July is an important day for Americans, which honors the birthday of the United States of America and the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. But it seems that it would also be a memorable day for the Europeans, honoring the sense of European citizenship in today’s knowledge economy based on the values of individual freedom, equality, tolerance, privacy and democracy .

Thanks to Peter Maybarduk for his contributions to this post.

Can you say “Déjà vu” in Spanish?

Keanan McGonigle Access to Courts, Consumer & Worker Safeguards, Digital Rights, Ethics and Lobbying Reform, Health Care, North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Regulatory Safeguards, Safe & Affordable Drugs & Devices, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

Dear Neighbor:

Congratulations on your inclusion in the elite group of states that are currently negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement! Your acceptance into this proposed “historic, 21^st century trade agreement” means that much of the “burden” of making laws and regulations for your nation will be taken off of you. No worries; lobbyists for Hollywood and American pharmaceutical companies and more than 600 official “corporate trade advisers” to the Office of United States Trade Representative (USTR) will help take care of the details.

Sorry to mention it, but we’re afraid many of your laws pertaining to intellectual property (IP), affecting issues from Internet privacy to access to affordable medications, might need a little “tweaking” to ensure they comply with the specifications of U.S. corporate “advisers.” The USTR’s demands at the TPP negotiations read like a wish list from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and YOU have the opportunity to grant all their wishes.

You see, the condition the U.S. imposed for Mexico to get a seat at this corporate banquet was that Mexico agree to accept everything that the other countries already have negotiated over the past three years. Sure, NAFTA required some nasty changes to your IP laws. Remember the millions your government wasted trying to lift the U.S. patent on common yellow beans that a bio-prospector filed after NAFTA? Well, wait until you get a look at the 21^stcentury NAFTA on steroids! More