'How Are We Going To Hope To Compete?': Jeanne Shaheen Slams U.S. Withdrawal From Int'l Orgs.

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During a Senate Small Business Committee hearing last week, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) asked Foundation for Defense of Democracies Senior Fellow Emily de La Bruyère about U.S. withdrawal from the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Transcript

00:00Senator Shaheen. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you to each of our witnesses

00:04for your testimony today. I have to say I agree with the premise that each of you

00:10have outlined about the threat that China poses to our innovation and the

00:15importance of the SBIR program and reauthorizing it in ensuring that we

00:20continue to innovate. I just I want to point out that last week the minority

00:26on the Foreign Relations Committee issued a report on China that talks about

00:33the threat from China and the decisions that have been made in the first six

00:38months of this administration that seed America's leadership in a whole range of

00:44issues and one of the reports findings highlighted how America's withdrawal

00:50from international organizations seeds influence to China which is in response

00:57has increased its contributions and personnel across a whole range of

01:02international bodies and by proposing a near zeroing out of US contributions to

01:09international organizations like the World Intellectual Property Organization

01:13WIPO the administration risks allowing China to be the dominant voice in

01:18international discussions about the future of IP protections including

01:23patents copyrights and trademarks so I would ask each of you how America's

01:29small businesses benefit from participation in international bodies like

01:34the World Intellectual Property Organization one of my favorite statistics

01:39about small businesses that they create 16 times more patents than large

01:44businesses so what happens around the IP protections that you all have

01:49outlined is critical so why is it important that the United States

01:54participate in those kinds of bodies that provide those protections for our

01:59small businesses

02:02standards and patents controls controls the world and they understand that very

02:17well and there's a they have a natural strategy a 2035 strategy to be a world

02:22leader in setting the standards if you think about standards they're renew in many

02:27respects they're like language you know they said the grammar they said the

02:30vocabulary the idiom and the country that sets you know is in control of the

02:36language controls the dialogue controls the thought controls the the innovation

02:40in the sphere so it's extremely important that the United States you know which has

02:45long dominated the standard-setting in you know and environment the

02:50institutions sort of wake up and reassert itself it's sort of we have been in the

02:55lead for so long like the proverbial story of the rabbit and the hair we have

02:59sort of taken a nap and so the but the you know the the relevant agencies need to be

03:05you know prodded hopefully from from here and to sort of take a leadership and make

03:12sure that we are ably represented that the people who are in these standard-setting

03:17organizations are trained and that we take a much more active proactive role in in the IP we have a very

03:25strong still in our innovation system research IP we're a very IP machine in

03:30many ways but that I but we need to also have a standards you know part of that

03:36equation to make sure that our ideas are dominant and that we have that

03:42advantage of being the standard-setters so if we don't pay our dues to Waipobe the

03:50end of this year we run the risk of not being able to participate again and what

03:56kind of a disadvantage does that put the United States businesses in if that

04:02happens well if somebody else is writing the rules by which you have to play that

04:05that certainly puts you at a disadvantage so that's not a situation where you want

04:09to be I thank you yes if I may add I think the one of the underestimated risks of

04:17China's approach is that Beijing has co-opted international organizations

04:20including and especially standard-setting organizations internet

04:23intellectual property organizations and Beijing does so with the benefits of its

04:27centralization and scale that means that even an activated US approach those

04:31organizations doesn't have any hope China floods the ITU with members who are

04:36paid they've pre-decided what standards they're going to form which means that

04:40just by engaging in these standards the US is in these organizations the US will be at a

04:44disadvantage so the hope that the US can claim is by extracting China from a system

04:50that has manipulated and restoring its integrity such that activities go in a

04:54way that follows their actual rules and intent but if we're not at the table how

04:58we're going to extract China and how we're going to hope to compete if we're

05:02not even there we need to establish organizations that don't have China in

05:08them or find ways like again how do we do that if we're not there to address the rules of those

05:15organizations and to establish that ability to make sure that China doesn't participate

05:23you don't have to be in part of an organization to launch a new one are we in

05:28the process of doing that I think that the most strategically significant move with

05:33international organizations the US could make right now would be to revoke China's

05:36permanent normal trade relations status it's a World Trade Organization move not a WIPO

05:41oh I wouldn't disagree with that at all I think that that is not a bad move and

05:45then you have trickle-down effects throughout other organizations that Beijing has co-opted

05:49very good thank you that'll be our next project so thank you

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