Good Day BIO: Midterms recap and Mexico's corn ban

For your weekend reading, we have our 2022 midterms recap: what happened, why it matters, and what the results mean for biotech innovation and patients. Plus, ahead of Agriculture Secretary Vilsack’s meeting with Mexico today, bipartisan Senators are calling for the U.S. to take action on the proposed corn ban. (740 words, 3 minutes, 42 seconds)

What happened in the midterms?

The 2022 midterms are officially behind us – so, what happened, and what does biotech need to know? We spoke with BIO’s federal and state policy experts to find out.

The federal results: Republicans will have a slim majority in the U.S. House, while Democrats will control the U.S. Senate, in what Aiken Hackett, BIO VP of Federal Government Relations, calls “a tiny tidal change” rather than the expected red wave.

What it means: “A divided Washington, and more specifically a divided Congress, may prove challenging for major legislative initiatives to advance. It is likely that Congress may just focus on must-pass legislation and policy areas of true bipartisanship – and that may even be challenging,” she said.

The state-level midterms were “significant and surprising,” said BIO’s Vice President of State Government Affairs, Patrick Plues. “Forty-six of the 50 states held an election in 2022, which covered 85 percent of all state-level legislative districts in the country,” and we saw a power shift in a few key states. 

The state results: Republicans control most of the governors' mansions and state legislative chambers, but Democrats are closing the gap, picking up a few key states. Republicans have trifecta control—meaning they hold the governorship and majority in the state house and senate—in 23 states, while Democrats have trifecta control in 14.

For BIO, the new year will be busy—especially with educating the new members of Congress and the 25% of state legislators who were newly elected. This presents a major opportunity for the biotechnology sector to educate lawmakers on the industry’s value to their economies and to patients who benefit from innovation. 

Read the full recap on Bio.News.

More Health News: 

The Morning Call (Opinion): How to support Pennsylvania’s booming biotech sector
“Pennsylvania’s biotech push is critical to meeting Biden’s goal of making the U.S. a leader in biotech and biomanufacturing. For that to happen, however, his administration is going to have to lean in on protecting American-made innovations by supporting IP rights at the World Trade Organization,” write Christopher Molineaux, President and CEO of Life Sciences Pennsylvania, and Nick Shipley, BIO’s Chief Advocacy Officer.

Mexico’s corn ban ‘a breach of USMCA’

Ahead of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s meeting with Mexican officials today, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators say Mexico’s proposed ban on biotech corn would be “a breach” of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). 

What’s happening: Secretary Vilsack will meet with a delegation of officials led by Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard today, and Secretary Vilsack is “prepared to call for a dispute resolution panel under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement unless Mexico backs off its plan to bar at least some U.S. exports of biotech corn,” reports Agri-Pulse.

To catch up: Mexican President López Obrador decreed that Mexico would phase out imports of genetically modified corn by 2024, harming U.S. farmers and Mexico’s economy and food security.

“These actions are unsupported by science and a breach of USMCA,”says a bipartisan letter to the Biden administration organized by U.S. Senators Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and signed by 24 colleagues. “It would be detrimental to food security in Mexico, hurt U.S. agricultural sustainability, and stifle future agricultural technology innovations that would benefit both nations.”

What we should do: “While we appreciate the efforts of USTR and USDA to resolve this issue by engaging with Mexican officials, we also encourage the administration to consider all options available in an effort to hold Mexico to their trade commitments including pursuing a dispute settlement process through USMCA,” the senators wrote in the letter to Secretary Vilsack and U.S. Trade Rep. Ambassador Katherine Tai.

BIO thanks Senators Fischer and Duckworth for their leadership on the letter—joining the chorus of House and Senate lawmakers as well as agriculture and biotech industry groups in warning about the impact of such a ban. 

President Biden’s Friday: Participating in a town hall with veterans to discuss the PACT Act, which provides benefits and care to veterans exposed to toxic fumes and other environmental hazards on the job. 

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: Congressional Democrats and Republicans released separate reports yesterday on the U.S. intelligence community’s response to COVID-19, reports POLITICO—with Democrats finding the intelligence community was unprepared and did not move quickly enough and Republicans focusing on the origin of COVID-19.

Also yesterday, BIO co-hosted a side event during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit with Bio Ventures for Global Health (BVGH) and the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority, which focused on improving cancer outcomes in Africa—we’ll have more details on Monday.