Antigua Files for Remedies- $3.4 billion per year in intellectual prop

[Richas]

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Antigua and Barbuda requests authorization from the DSB to suspend the application to the United States of concessions and related obligations of Antigua and Barbuda under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (the “GATS”) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the “TRIPS”).

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In summary: we hit trips on the turn.

The divergent approaches of Antigua and the EU (plus Brazil and India) are interesting here because between the two approaches we get maximum pressure on the US.

Antigua has gone for IPR and or cash, the EU for other trade concessions. The assumption seems to be that the EU will prioritise farming, I doubt this is the case, the EU wants access to the US for third world farmers (partly to reduce pressure on access to their own market) but the EU is trying to reduce direct farming subsidies in both the US and EU. Boeing would be top of many's list but the concessions are a shopping list, they can go for Boeing then Microsoft then someone else. In the steel dispute some quite bizarre and local items were included by both sides to maximise political pressure on key opponents.

If we identified the top 5 anti gambling politicians and then identified the local businesses (or donors) that are important to them we would have a short list for the EU concessions to add to the shopping list.