Argentina will loosen intellectual property laws governing pharmaceutical patents to conform with a new U.S. trade deal, stakeholders tell Inside U.S. Trade, addressing longstanding IP irritants for U.S. companies but worrying critics of the deal who contend its IP provisions will expand the pharmaceutical industry’s influence.
March 10, 2026
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World Trade Online
A draft ministerial statement that calls for negotiators to revitalize agricultural negotiations at the World Trade Organization and set milestones for the talks has received broad support from almost all members, but the U.S. and four cotton-producing West African countries opposed it last week, preventing the consensus needed for its adoption at the ministerial later this month in Cameroon.
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Fixing a global economic “rupture” requires stepping outside Washington, says former U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, who is looking to build a broad new coalition of workers, family farmers, small-businesses owners and others she has long contended are traditionally excluded from trade policymaking.
The federal judge overseeing litigation over refunds of President Trump’s overturned “emergency” tariffs is welcoming U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s planned system for those payments as “simple and efficient” but pushing the administration to move quickly, contending in a new order that every month of delay will add some $650 million of interest to the total bill.
The federal judge who earlier this week ordered the administration to refund importers that paid President Trump’s now-overturned “emergency” tariffs announced Friday that he will not require “immediate” payments after U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s trade chief told the Court of International Trade a streamlined refund system could be ready in 45 days.
Switzerland intends to continue negotiations with the U.S. on a trade agreement reached in principle last year despite “considerable uncertainty around U.S. trade policy” after the Supreme Court threw out the legal basis for most of President Trump’s sweeping tariffs, the Swiss government said on Friday.
Divisions among World Trade Organization members over the fate of a tariff moratorium on electronic transmission and a related e-commerce work program have prevented the drafting of a compromise text to be considered at the 14th ministerial conference later this month, according to the facilitator of the negotiations.