<
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/09/the-uk-wants-a-trade-deal-with-india-that-would-boost-the-already-healthy-profits-of-big-pharma-and-cause-millions-of-people-to-sicken/>
"Although trade deals are nominally about, well, trade,
Techdirt readers know
that they have become an important way to force through changes in areas like
copyright and patents without any meaningful democratic scrutiny. That’s
because trade deals are negotiated in secret, and then presented as done and
dusted once talks have been concluded. The argument typically rolled out is
that it was “necessary” to make various concessions in the area of copyright
and/or patents in order to obtain a deal, and that now the final text has been
agreed, nothing can be done about it.
That’s certainly how things developed in the case of three major trade
agreements covered by Techdirt in recent years — ACTA, TTIP and TPP — and looks
to be true of a new UK-India trade deal under discussion. Being able to
negotiate trade agreements independently, rather than as part of the EU, was
supposed to one of the big benefits of Brexit, but it hasn’t worked out that
way. Although plenty of trade deals have been signed between the UK and other
nations, they are almost without exception “rollover” deals: that is, they
merely continue the trade terms that were already in place when the UK was part
of the EU. The really important new trade deals that Brexiters promised — with
the US and China — show no signs of materializing, for various political
reasons. That leaves India as the only major market where the UK has some hope
of agreeing a new deal.
Sadly, the UK is trying to use these negotiations to force through some really
bad changes to India’s patent laws. As usual, we only know this thanks to the
leak of the relevant chapter of the
UK-India Free Trade Agreement."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
