Brazil is getting ready to break the patents of North American pharmaceutical products if the World Organization of the Trade decides today that the country can make it, in retaliation to the subsidies granted to the North American cotton farmers, it informed the Brazilian press.

Brazil challenged the subsidies of the USA to the cotton in 2002 and, two years later, OMC decided that the about of US$ 3 billion paid to the farmers of cotton of the USA a year distorted the global prices and they violated the trade rules.

An option would be to increase the import tariffs against the North American goods. But Brazil is getting ready to take measures in relation to the intellectual property, a much more significant area to the USA. OMC should include that possibility in its decision today.

According to a matter published in a Brazilian newspaper, the government prepared a decree to allow to the Brazilian pharmaceutical industries to produce medicines protected by North American patents.

The expected decision for today comes to the surface in a context of growing frustration in Brasília in relation to the Obama government’s reluctance of acting on the subsidies to the agricultural production that they affect the cotton and other sections of the Brazilian agribusiness, including the sugar and the ethanol.

Via: Financial Times.