IP is our key opportunity to gut China’s strategic and technological advantage

For decades, the United States was the leading advocate for a global trading system that respected and enforced intellectual property rights (IPR), both because the U.S. economy and millions of jobs depended on IPR and because policymakers understood how important IPR were to global advancement. Without that persistent and forceful U.S. voice, IPR around the world would have been considerably weaker, to the detriment of technological and other forms of progress.

Unfortunately, today, U.S. policymakers have walked away from that critical role, all too often arguing for weaker, not stronger, IPR and enforcement. In large part this is because many, including many in the Biden administration, have come under the influence of anti-IP proselytizers who see IP as a tool for corporate enrichment that limits access by working people, both at home, and abroad, especially in developing nations.1 For them, weak IP is a critical tool in the equity agenda: enabling cheaper drugs, free content, low-priced clean energy tech in less developed nations, and other redistributionist goals.

There are two key problems with America’s abandonment of IP leadership. First, the job of the U.S. government is to first and foremost promote American welfare, not global welfare. There is no doubt that giving away valuable U.S. IP to developing nations would help the latter (at least in the short run) the same way giving them hundreds of billions of dollars would help them. But it would hurt American companies, creators, and jobs and the overall economy.

Second, weak IP will not help the rest of the world in the moderate to long term because it would reduce the incentives and resources needed for innovation to help solve global challenges. Climate change requires much better and cleaner technology. Giving U.S. clean energy IP to developing nation hurts that task, not helps it. The world needs not just drug access, but much better drugs. Weak IP hurts that. Great content—in the form of movies, books, music, photographs, and more—depends on IP.

As policymakers seek to preserve and advance America’s lead in a range of advanced industries, especially vis- à-vis China, they should be strengthening U.S. commitment to strong IP protection, including fighting to protect U.S. innovators and creators from IP theft.2 Without that, a key tool in protecting U.S. advanced industry leadership will be tossed away.

Many nations, including the “Global South,” would like nothing more than to see a drastically weakened global IP regime. China, in particular, is in favor of this because it enables the country to more easily steal and otherwise obtain the IP that is so necessary to its continued industrial and military advance, while developing nations get free resources Americans paid hundreds of billions of dollars to develop.

Without strong IP leadership, American allies that believe in strong IPR will have a much harder time advancing their agenda.3 And that is likely to lead to countries that want everything for free to set the agenda.4 The result is a weaker U.S. economy and less global innovation.5