 The US House of Representatives has passed an unprecedented bill which could eventually outlaw the popular social media platform Tiktok. The bill titled Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, if also passed by the Senate that is, would demand that by dance Tiktok's parent company divest all its US assets to another US company or face a total ban of operations. Now while the bill has been forwarded to the Senate, it is reignited so-called US-China trade war in the tech industry. We talk to Anish for more. Anish, thanks so much for joining us. So maybe could you first take us through what has been happening in the US House of Representatives? What are the arguments that are being right now presented? It's been a long, it's been an issue that has been in the news for a very long time in the United States, especially in the houses of Congress. Yes. So when it comes to Tiktok, it has always been the center of, one of those companies that has been at the center of the US-China trade wars, not primarily much because of its own doing, to be very honest, but because it has been identified as one of the targets, especially in the United States by, say, President Trump, former President Trump, and some of his acolytes. So in many ways, it's coming back right now in the entire debate is essentially an indication that this whole US-China trade dispute is going to re-emerge and as a major election issue in the coming days, probably it might, because primarily because there is a good chance that many people believe there's a good chance that Trump is set for presidency next year. So definitely it is going to be at the center of the debates and the election cycle as such. So obviously, a bill like this is going to also put Democrats at a very precarious state because many of them definitely do not want to come across as non-patriots or apatriotic. So obviously, you see the kind of bipartisan support. Definitely many of them did not support the law because obviously it has its own set of legal problems that can actually backfire for very many companies in the future. But nevertheless, we are seeing this sort of bipartisan support. The bill as such, if you look at it, doesn't really deal with the necessity of TikTok or any kind of thing, but it pretty much just compels, it will compel TikTok to essentially sell all of its shares and stakes or assets in the United States to a US company within a span of six months or risk being banned completely from operating in the country. The primary reason given by the makers of the bill is essentially that the new security laws in mainland China pretty much has a clause which can compel companies to tech companies, especially to cooperate with them when it comes to intelligence gathering for certain national security cases. But the thing is, it is not out of the ordinary for a country to have a legislation of that sort. Whether or not we think how problematic it might be, it definitely is not something new. The United States itself has its own set of laws that actually compel tech companies, their own tech companies to divulge information and intelligence to the United States. And that has been a debate set aside. But to use that as an excuse to essentially put the owners on a foreign company to pretty much diverse itself from the United States, not simply diverse itself, but actually to give it away to a US company of their choosing is something that is unprecedented in many ways, especially considering the fact that the US has always prided itself as being this place of pre-trade or competitive trade and business. So this is definitely brings back to the spotlight some of the hypocrisies, but also some of the debates that we are seeing. But the move itself is quite unprecedented in many ways. Anish, of course, like you said, this law is not out of any concern of the kind of problems big tech has because clearly there is no action being taken against similar big tech or US big tech companies. But what do you think what is first of all what lies ahead for this legislation and also how do you think this sort of affects the larger US China trade war, which is the term that is used as trade war, but how do you think it affects that in the coming years? Then Bill, let's begin with that. Its future is quite uncertain because the Senate is a very, you know, it can behave differently. We do not know how each of the senators stand. A large part of that depends also on how much threat other foreign companies actually view such a bill because obviously something of the sort can set a precedent for other companies as well, even companies that hail from allied or friendly nations. So that is definitely something that is going to be a matter of concern for many foreign companies. It's not a matter that only affects TikTok and the lobbying money and how that flows through the Senate will eventually decide how the votes are going to line up to. There is obviously that. But if it comes to fruition, what we're looking at is essentially a political window of sorts because the person that right now is coming up with a plan to buy off TikTok is essentially somebody who was in the Trump campaign as well, who is very close to Trump. In fact, it pretty much lines up as a very political attack on another company. But on the long term, this will be viewed as an attack in itself because China has obviously raised a statement, a position to such a bill saying that it is a sort of banditry that the U.S. is trying to impose on TikTok. The scan actually escalated. Something of this sort actually gets passed and we have heard already from Biden that he will not veto it. It will, in fact, sign the legislation into law. It clearly shows that this is only going to escalate if the Senate eventually passes the bill. And that definitely will have its own set of impact because we already saw what happened with Huawei, the entire extradition process, which never really came to fruition. There was the entire thing of espionage, which was actually quite, there was no evidence that was substantiated in any court of law. So we have seen that kind of process and that can actually bring back the whole entire trade wars as quote unquote trade wars dispute that can actually create global ripples that is not very good for anybody to be very honest. And we have talked about that before, but this pretty much is going back to that era of very uncertain trading disputes that can actually affect global supply chains already at a time when everything is pretty much stressed. So that definitely is something that needs to be kept in mind for anybody observing this, but we are not looking at, we have to first wait and see how the Senate is going to act on the bill and how things are going to move forward from there. Right. Anish, thank you so much for that update. India recently signed a free trade agreement with a block of four European countries. The trade and economic partnership agreement has been signed with what is called the European Free Trade Association. Now this comprises Iceland, Leichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. And it aims to bring in 100 billion dollars in foreign investment to India in the next 15 years in addition to creating 1 million jobs. However, activists have expressed concerns over some of the provisions in the deal, especially in the health sector. We go to Jyotsana for more. Jyotsana, thank you so much for joining us. So free trade agreements often are seen as something a bit esoteric, so to speak. It's a bit difficult to sort of go through the nuances. So maybe could you first take us through what this agreement is about in the first place before we go into some of the matters of concern? So India has been discussing many free trade agreements with the different countries or trade blocks. So this is a particular trade block of four countries of Europe, which is Iceland, Leichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. And it is about, it's a trade agreement. So it has a gamut of things regarding agricultural products, pharmaceutical products and certain general guidelines about trade between India and this trade block of four countries. So that had been in discussion for many years. And as happened during COVID, a lot of free trade agreements, their negotiations were stalled. And, but they have made a comeback again in the past couple of years, and especially last one year. So this is one of the first trade agreements, free trade agreements that India has concluded with a country or a trade block. And this was signed on 10th March this month. So yeah, so that is where we are. Right. So could you maybe tell us what are the reasons for concern that activists are like yawning out? I mean, it is well known. Firstly, the entire politics of free trade agreements is to really bypass the negotiations and the agreements that you arrive at at World Trade Organization, because that is the body which actually where all the countries came together to discuss how the international trade should be conducted. Well, their provisions are really problematic. But when we go for free trade agreements, then developing countries lose even further ground and rather than gaining any. So it has happened again in this case. And I will speak from point of view of access to medicines and the concerns that we have, because India has given in majorly in terms of intellectual property rights. It has given so much rights to the big pharmaceutical companies, it is going to help them and actually work against the generic industry of India, which actually means that the prices of medicines in the long run are going to increase if the provisions that exist in the free trade agreement start to be applied to India. So on that front, it is a major loss for India as we see it. Right. Jyotsa, to maybe explain this a bit more, could you talk about how these intellectual property barriers, as in how do they sort of work and in practice, how does it really affect say a customer, for instance, in India? Right. So the point is intellectual property when a company claims intellectual property over a product, the idea is that there has to be a balance between public health and innovation. So that's what it came about. But as we can understand, the big companies pushed for as much monopoly as possible over their product. And then there are certain provisions which help them. So we know very well about patents and where a company has monopoly and nobody else can produce that product on which the company has a patent till the patent exists only after it exists. Now there we have lost a lot. Firstly, pre-grant opposition, this is something which is very well built in Indian law where anybody, a common citizen of India or any other country also anywhere in the world, a common person or civil society or activists or generic industry manufacturers, they can go to the court or to the government before the grant of the patent to say that this is a bogus patent. Here is out why you should not grant it. Now there this is how the courts function and law functions. But here what we have agreed to is that a lot of power will be given to the controller of the patents in the Indian patent office. And on prima facie, a case can be rejected. So even before hearing the people who have objections, it can be rejected, which we think is going to be really problematic because there is always a tendency to grant patents rather than not to grant. And so we are losing ground there. One good thing probably that has happened is it has been said that the patents granted or opposite not grant should be done in a time bound manner. Maybe that is good. But it should again lead to a proper analysis. And just because we need to maintain some time, we should not be granting more patents than we should be. So that is one major problem. The secondly, working of a patent. So there is, if a company wants to claim patent and if there is an opposition filed, then the company has to prove that it is providing sufficient quantity of medicines in India and only then it can continue to hold the patent. There again, and it actually depends a lot of information is derived from an annual information annually that the company serves to the Indian government and it is available publicly. So anybody can see and you can see, okay, this company is not providing the medicines to India. So we should go to the court. It's an important medicine and let's fight for it. Now, after this agreement, it is saying that the companies have to provide that information, if at all, once in three years. Now, so for the longest of period, people will not be able to find a lot of data which helps in the filing oppositions. Thirdly, and there I would like to say somewhere Indian government, maybe it is not correct to say light, but misled media and the civil society and activists majorly last month because there is something called data exclusivity which means that the data that the company provides will be saved. Now, according to Indian law, there are many ways in which that data can be accessed. So that as soon as the patent expires before that research can be done and the medicines can be produced. So we made a lot of noise about it because a leaked text showed that India was going to give into data exclusivity. The Indian government is on record saying that we are not going to give up on data exclusivity. But in the agreement where we see, so right now they have not done it, but the agreement says every year, once every year, they will revisit whether data exclusivity should be included or not, which actually means extended monopoly will be discussed. And this is a sword which will be hanging on India all the time now. Lost majorly. So the thing is, it is going to impact India's laws. So also, if you agree to these terms in one negotiation, in one free trade agreement, then you have to change your laws, which actually means no other country has to go through so much negotiations with India because we will have to change our laws, which is going to be a big problem. Thank you so much, Joseph, for the update. And that's all we have in this episode of DDD Brief. We'll be back with a fresh episode tomorrow. Meanwhile, do visit our website, peoplesdispatch.org. Follow us on all the social media platforms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button.