Background
During the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has cost millions of lives around the globe, caused major morbidity and provoked widespread economic and social disruption. In response, governments have enacted policies to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic. This research focuses on policies aimed at increasing access to essential health products and services by comparing them to the global rules governing trade, investment and intellectual property. We have assessed whether these rules have- or could have- constrained countries in responding to this and future crises. The study identifies the nature and scope of the trade-related health sector policies implemented by a sample group of countries, selected because of their systemic significance: the United States, Germany, France, China, South Africa and India. Each policy is placed into one of five broad categories covered by trade and investment rules so that we could assess their consistency with those rules.
Results
We found that the types of trade-related health measures were quite diverse. The high-income countries in our study were the most active in the policy space and tended to rely on subsidies-based measures while the middle-income countries relied more heavily on export and import measures. Policies directly relevant to intellectual property protection were virtually non-existent. When evaluating the implemented policies against the global trade and investment rules, we found potential inconsistencies with five different types of rules: those governing subsidies, import and export trade barriers, investment measures, government procurement and trade-related intellectual property.
Conclusions
Given the tension between the global rules and the practices of policy making during the pandemic, we conclude that this tension must be resolved in favor of governments making policy rather than relying on existing exceptions or pushing national governments to comply more exactly with the rules. Although the pandemic itself does not respect national borders, governance still generally occurs at the national level because national governments are often the only entities with both the legal authority and the practical ability to respond.
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