Safeguarding American Ingenuity: A Comparative Analysis of International Trade Regimes in Mitigating Chinese Intellectual Property Theft [Note]

Abstract

The ever-present tension between the United States and China has heightened in recent years due to a rise in the theft of American intellectual property from Chinese semiconductors. Pharmaceutical intellectual property is at the crux of this issue, as a hit to this valuable market comes with severe penalties for the United States. Neither legislation from the World Trade Organization nor the more recent Phase One Trade Deal can present a viable solution for this issue, resulting in the need for a structural rebirth in international trade legislation. Previous discussions on this issue have touched on the need to rebalance the TRIPS Agreement and reassess the United States’ trade relationship with China. These arguments do not clarify the need to reformat the WTO as a whole and recognize the institution for what it is—a system that was not created to support the levels of innovation and technology that exist today; a system that certainly did not account for China’s contrasting market structure. This paper examines a new dynamic goal that would require 1) the WTO to hold China fiscally and criminally responsible for its unfair market practices; 2) the United Nations to create a new, encompassing multilateral trade agreement in the future; and 3) the United States to develop a concrete plan to decouple from China.