If the US is going to break these agreements, other countries will decide that our IP is not worth protecting. All they need to do is revert to the laws they had before TRIPS and free trade with the US.
It's not just the tech industry. It's movies. It's pharma. It's biotech.
This will economically ruin us.
I would agree that IP protections have gotten out of hand, and that shorter copyright would be beneficial.
But it's not beneficial when some country will decide that our drug patents are worthless because we attacked them with tariffs.
And the Phase X safety and efficacy trials, which comprise the bulk of pharma development costs?
Say what you want about the downsides to the current pharma development model, but those companies are highly incentivized to be as efficient with their pipeline spend as they can. And they're pretty damn good at it.
In contrast, if you use government-selected allocation, you'd turn pharma development into military procurement.
The more reasonable approach would be to enter cost-sharing agreements, where the government paid for a share of critical stages, in return for getting certain rights if the drugs were successful.
Do you think a government-administrated drug development program would be more efficient than private industry?