S. 5265
USTRx Act
Sponsor: Tim Sheehy
2 cosponsors
Official summary
Written by the Congressional Research Service.
Use Sovereignty To reduce Rx Act or the USTRx Act
This bill establishes the role of Chief Pharmaceutical Trade Negotiator within the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). The negotiator must conduct trade negotiations, enforce trade agreements relating to U.S. pharmaceutical products, and address acts, policies, or practices of high-income countries that adversely impact the market access of U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers.
The USTR must annually compile a list of high-income countries based on official statistics of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development of the World Bank. Based on that list, the negotiator must submit a report describing (1) such countries' actions and impacts relating to the pharmaceutical trade, and (2) the current status of any responsive actions taken by the United States.
The bill also requires the USTR to submit to Congress a plan to respond to certain adverse acts, policies, or practices of high-income countries that are related to the trade of pharmaceutical products.
Text of the bill
(a) Findings. Congress finds the following:
(1) Pharmaceutical price controls in foreign markets distort global trade flows and competition by depressing the prices of innovative drugs and exploiting pharmaceutical innovations researched and developed in the United States.
(2) By setting prices at levels that are not market-based, such price controls undervalue the discovery of new, innovative treatments, diminish opportunities and incentives for global innovation in new medicines, and threaten to restrict access to new treatments and cures for United States patients and consumers.
(3) Recognizing those dynamics, it is critical that the United States use all available trade tools to address such free-riding to ensure that foreign government regulatory reimbursement regimes are transparent, provide procedural fairness, are non-discriminatory, and provide full market access to United States products.
(b) Sense of Congress. It is the sense of Congress that—
(1) ensuring the security of innovative and affordable healthcare is a top priority for the people of the United States and for Congress;
(2) foreign government policies that mandate artificially low drug prices in foreign markets undermine that priority by reducing global incentives to invest in the development of new medicines;
(3) such exploitative behavior unfairly shifts the cost of developing new treatments to the United States and unduly relies on United States patients and taxpayers to finance global pharmaceutical innovation; and
(4) safeguarding access to life-saving treatments for United States patients requires combating such behavior so that foreign countries pay their fair share of the costs associated with the development of new drugs.