§247d–7f Collaboration and coordination

Summary

Allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services, working with the Attorney General and the Homeland Security Secretary, to hold meetings with people making security countermeasures or qualified pandemic/epidemic products to help plan, make, ship, buy, or store those products. The Secretary must tell the Attorney General, the FTC Chair, and the Homeland Security Secretary ahead of time what will be discussed. The Secretary leads the meeting, lets the relevant developers and makers attend, keeps discussions limited to the covered activities, protects national security and private business secrets, and cannot force anyone to disclose confidential commercial information. A full transcript must be kept, and parts can be withheld from public release if they would threaten national security. Any written agreement from those meetings must be sent to the Attorney General and the FTC Chair with details about its purpose, content, methods, why cooperation is needed, and other requested facts. Participating in the meetings is not an antitrust violation, and following an agreement is protected from antitrust law only if the Attorney General (with the FTC Chair) grants an exemption. The Attorney General must act on an exemption request within 15 business days, may extend that by up to 10 more business days, and an approved exemption takes effect immediately. Exemptions apply only to the covered activities, are allowed only if they do not cause substantial anticompetitive harm unnecessary to ensure availability, last up to 3 years (and may be renewed), and misuse of information for other purposes remains illegal. The Attorney General and FTC Chair must report to Congress not later than one year after enactment and then every two years. The authority in this law expires on December 31, 2026. Defined terms in one line each: “Antitrust laws” means federal competition laws (and similar state laws); “countermeasure or product” means a security countermeasure, a qualified countermeasure, or a qualified pandemic or epidemic product; “covered activities” means work on development, manufacture, distribution, purchase, or storage (with explicit exclusions such as price-fixing, dividing markets, sharing nonessential competitor cost or production data, restricting unrelated sales or licensing, or forcing participation in unrelated projects).