Pete Stark: “time sure flies when you're having fun. Just last week I expressed serious misgivings about the U.S.-Australian Free…”

“time sure flies when you're having fun. Just last week I expressed serious misgivings about the U.S.-Australian Free Trade Agreement (FTA), noting, among other problems, that it set a bad precedent for future trade bills. Those concerns are confirmed today by this bill. The U.S.-Morocco FTA is a bad agreement that protects U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers while ignoring labor standards and the healthcare needs of Moroccan citizens. I warned you last week that a vote for the Australian FTA was a vote against prescription drug reimportation, and it's true again today. We cannot continue to allow USTR to include intellectual property provisions in FTAs that undermine Congress's ability to provide affordable prescription drugs through reimportation. True, we aren't going to be importing drugs from Morocco any time soon, but what happens in the next FTA, and the one after that? It should be clear by now that the USTR is merely a shill for the pharmaceutical industry, engaged in nothing more than closing the door to drug reimportation at the request of the Administration. Unfortunately, the Morocco agreement doesn't stop at undermining the debate over reimportation. In fact, it goes much further by limiting access to potentially life saving drugs in Morocco. Because the agreement limits parallel importation, if a public health emergency breaks out, Morocco cannot import affordable drugs from neighboring countries if a U.S. country manufacturers the drug.”