In its annual report on unfair trade practices stemming from countries’ abuse of intellectual property rights and protections, the U.S. Trade Representative again called out Europe for its use of geographic indicators to protect domestic industry.
“Concerns with the European Union’s aggressive promotion of its exclusionary geographical indications policies persist,” the agency said in a statement.
At the heart of the issue is the EU’s insistence that food and other products can only receive specific labels if they are made or grown in a specific region – for example, champagne, for sparkling wine produced in France’s Champagne region, or roquefort, for cheese produced with specific processes near Roquefort-sur-Soulzon.
The 2025 report echoes previous years’ iterations, lamenting the hefty trade deficits the U.S. runs with Europe in many agricultural products protected by the EU’s GI system. The EU, for example, exports more than $1.4 billion of cheese to the U.S. but buys just a little more than $6 million.
USTR also reiterated concerns that the EU uses trade agreements to expand the protections beyond its borders with little “transparency or due process.”
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"Too many trading partners have been coerced into imposing trade barriers for products using common food and beverage names,” Jaime Castaneda, executive director of the Consortium for Common Food Names, said in a statement. “We appreciate USTR’s ongoing recognition of this issue but urge the U.S. government to stop trading partners [from] succumbing to European pressures and imposing trade barriers on U.S. products.”
Krysta Harden, president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, argued that the geographic protections amount to a “trade barrier dressed up as intellectual property protection.”
The 2025 report broke with previous years, however, by adding Mexico to its list of worst offending countries for intellectual property rights abuse. USTR says Mexico has not fully implemented its IP commitments under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, suffers from high rates of copyright piracy, and is not doing enough to tackle infringements, including of plant variety IP.
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