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 The Special 301 designations and actions announced in this Report are the result of deliberations among all relevant agencies within the U.S. Government, informed by extensive consultation with affected stakeholders, foreign governments, the U.S. Congress, and other interested parties.

USTR, together with the Special 301 subcommittee of the Trade Policy Staff Committee, works to make a well-balanced assessment of U.S. trading partners' IPR protection and enforcement, as well as related market access issues, in accordance with the statutory criteria set out by Congress (see Annex 1).

This assessment is necessarily conducted on a case-by-case basis, taking into account diverse factors such as a trading partner's level of development, its international obligations and commitments, the concerns of rights holders and other interested parties, and the trade and investment policies of the United States. It is informed by the various cross-cutting issues and trends identified below in Section I – Developments in Intellectual Property Rights Protection and Enforcement. Each assessment is based upon the specific facts and circumstances that shape IPR protection and enforcement regimes in a particular trading partner.

In the year ahead, USTR will continue to interact closely with the governments of the trading partners that are discussed in this Report. In preparation for and in the course of those interactions, USTR will:

 engage with U.S. stakeholders, the U.S. Congress, and other interested parties to ensure that the U.S. Government position is well-informed by the full range of views on the pertinent issues;

conduct extensive discussions with individual trading partners regarding their respective IPR regimes;

encourage those trading partners to engage fully, and with the greatest degree of transparency, with the range of stakeholders on IPR matters; and

identify, where possible, ways in which the United States can be of assistance. 

USTR will conduct these discussions in a manner that both advances the policy goals of the United States and respects the importance of meaningful policy dialogue with U.S. trading partners.

Additionally, USTR works closely with other U.S. Government agencies to ensure consistency of U.S. trade policy objectives with other Administration policies. For example, as described in Section I of this Report, USTR has convened a new subcommittee of the interagency Trade Policy Staff Committee, called the "Trade Enhancing Access to Medicines" (TEAM), to investigate how to best deploy the tools of trade policy to further the Administration's objective of promoting trade in, reducing obstacles to, and enhancing access to both innovative and generic medicines.

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