U.S. trade authorities keeping tabs on Canada’s coming changes to drug prices

May 1, 2020 | 8:45 AM

WASHINGTON — The United States is keeping Canada on its “watch list” of countries where policies and practices could pose a threat to American intellectual property rights.

In its annual report on foreign perils to American rights holders, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative is raising concerns about Canada’s plan to recalibrate how it calculates the price of prescription drugs.

The report stops short, however, of demands from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry that Canada be elevated to the USTR’s list of “priority” trouble spots.

The federal Liberal government announced last summer that the arm’s-length Patented Medicine Prices Review Board would stop using drug prices in the U.S. and Switzerland — among the highest in the world — to help it determine what Canadian patients should pay.