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- to monitor China and Paraguay under Section 306 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended. This means that USTR will be in a position to move directly to trade sanctions if there is slippage in either country's enforcement of bilateral IPR agreements.
- to place 16 trading partners on the Special 301 Priority Watch List: Argentina, Dominican Republic, EU, Egypt, Greece, Guatemala, India, Israel, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Peru, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Additionally, there will be an "out-of-cycle" review scheduled for Italy, Korea and Macau.
- to place 39 trading partners on the Watch List. These countries include ones being placed on the Watch List for the first time, such as Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Lithuania.
- Other WTO dispute settlement proceedings and out-of-cycle reviews will be initiated if necessary.
- The Special 301 Report also elaborates upon the Administration's health-related IPR policy.
- Since December 1, USTR and Health and Human Services (HHS) staffs have worked together to address individual health-related intellectual property issues that have arisen with U.S. trading partners, as in the case of Thailand, as well as with respect to the health-related issues that have arisen in this year's Special 301 process. For the first time, HHS has participated actively as a member of the Special 301 Trade Policy Staff Sub-Committee that is charged with developing the Special 301 recommendations. The committee has taken health and development issues into account in accordance with the Administration's December 1 policy in making its Special 301 recommendations.
- Since December 1, the United States has encouraged its trading partners facing a health care crisis to explore all options for extending access to effective treatments. The Administration has made clear that the final choice of what policies to employ is one for each government to make on its own. Should a government avail itself of the flexibility the WTO TRIPS Agreement provides to address a health care crisis, the United States will raise no objection, provided the policy employed is consistent with the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement.
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