India listed on USTR’s ‘Priority Watch List’
The USTR in its Special 301 report released recently, categorised India as a ‘priority watch list’ country over intellectual property concerns.
About the Report
The Special 301 report is annually released by the USTR to identify trade barriers to the USA due to intellectual property concerns. It categorises countries under ‘watch list’ if they have IP rights deficiencies. If the concerns go unaddressed, the countries are degraded to ‘priority watch list’.
On India
In the recent report, USTR placed India in the priority watch list over allegations of insufficient measurable improvements to its IP framework on new challenges and also long standing issues concerning the US trade with India- especially in the pharmaceutical sector. A total of 11 countries were categorised under the priority watch list- such as China, Russia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
USTR
The office of USTR or United States Trade Representative is a US government agency that develops the country’s trade policy and conducts trade negotiations with other countries- at bilateral and multilateral levels.
