Brazil joins the drug thieves

It is not often that steel workers in Ohio and Pennsylvania find something in common with a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company.
But today they do. Just as steel companies and their workers have been the victims of unfair trade policies, now Merck & amp; Co. has been told by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that his country will violate Merck's patent on one of the most effective AIDS drugs on the market.
Merck had offered to sell efavirenz to Brazil at 1.10 a pill, a 30 percent discount. But Brazil, which is hardly a Third World country, demanded that Merck sell the drug for the same price it was offered to Thailand, 65 cents a pill.
There is, of course, some irony in Merck negotiating with Brazil. The American pharmaceutical lobby spent millions of dollars to ensure that Congress would not give the U.S. government the ability to negotiate bulk prices with drug companies. But that doesn't make Brazil's theft of Merck's patent any less of a crime.
Bad-faith bargaining
Merck was bargaining with Brazil, and Brazil simply said, "We can do better. We'll take your drugs."
Brazil's action is a combination of greed and in-your-face anti-Americanism. Ironically, trade figures for 2006 show that the United States had a 7 billion deficit with Brazil. The country is already selling us far more than it's buying, but it refuses to pay a fair price for U.S. intellectual property.
The Health Ministry said that by violating Merck's patent for efavirenz, Brazil would save about 240 million between now and 2012, when the patent expires. That works out to 40 million a year in savings for a country that stands to sell 40 billion more in goods to the United States than it buys during that period.
Everyone gets hurt in a trade war, but in this case, Brazil has fired the first shot, and the Bush administration should fire back with both barrels. Let's see if the White House has more guts in dealing with countries that steal drugs than it has shown with countries that steal jobs.