Policies affecting medical goods and services trade during the COVID-19 pandemic

provide remedies to block mergers or to require partial divestment as a condition for merger approval. For example, in 2015, the European Commission cleared Pfizer’s acquisition of Hospira, which owned a medicine used to treat autoimmune diseases, subject to the condition that Pfizer’s competing biosimilar development project be divested to another buyer (EC 2019).

In addition, competition authorities monitor anticompetitive behavior by market participants to ensure effective competition not only in private sector markets but, equally, in public sector markets for medical goods and services. Competition law and policy complement government procurement law and policy by helping to detect and combat anticompetitive behavior among suppliers of medical goods and services. For example, in a recent case in Japan, the court found that a group of large medical suppliers had been colluding for years (that is, they determined in advance who would bid, and they agreed on prices to be quoted) concerning procurement organized by the Japan Community Health Care Organization, which oversees more than 100 hospitals and medical facilities (EU-Japan Centre 2021).

Medical goods trade

Import and export restricting and liberalizing policies The uncertain scale, severity, and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic plus the imperative to overcome urgent domestic shortages of medical supplies shaped restrictions and reforms of the medical goods trade and allowed countries to apply discriminatory policies as an exception to WTO principles. This section provides evidence on the patterns of import and export policies—including tariffs, taxes, quotas, and licensing requirements—affecting COVID-19–related medical goods.21

Extent of restricting and liberalizing measures. Since the pandemic began, governments imposed both import liberalizing and export restricting measures on trade in medical goods. Import liberalization was most common, followed by curbs on exports and imports (figure 2.8, panel a).22 Export liberalization was the least used among border-related trade policies.

Both import reforms and export curbs surged in the first two quarters of 2020, reaching a total of 200 and 134, respectively, in May 2020. From that moment onward, import liberalizing measures continued to grow, reaching a peak of 242 in December 2021. As of January 2022, the number of such measures decreased to 219, suggesting the temporary character of some liberalization efforts. Measures curbing exports slightly decreased during the first three months after their peak in April 2020 and then slowly increased over time, reaching a total of 138 in February 2022. Restrictive import measures also increased but at a slower pace and reached 88 in February 2022. Export liberalizing measures were seldomly used. Their maximum recorded number is 18.23