their export. Section 301 was also invoked by President Trump in March 2018, setting off the 2018 China–United States trade dispute. According to the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) the Special 301 Report and the Watchlists is used to pressure other nations to adopt stricter copyright laws and take a more active role in combating copyright infringement. WTO dispute settlement proceedings The USTR has used the Special 301 Reports to initiate formal dispute settlement proceedings at the World Trade Organization (WTO) if it believes a country does not comply with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). WTO dispute settlement proceedings are initiated when the country's noncompliance with TRIPS is judged to be too narrow to make the country a "priority foreign country". The countries against which the USTR intends to pursue dispute settlement proceedings are announced every April in the Special 301 Report. Criticism Lobbying power Peter Drahos, a law professor at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London's School of Law, has called the Special 301 Report "a public law devoted to the service of private corporate interests". It explicitly protects and acts in favor of U.S. intellectual property owners, most often large corporations, against any foreign national policy or unofficial action that does not conform, even in its domestic legislation, to the United States' position on international copyright and IP. Threat of action under Special 301 has been used to insert U.S. trade lobby backed advisers into states' domestic legislative process in order to ensure compliance with U.S. trade norms. One of the most direct examples comes from a former U.S. trade lobbyist, speaking in 1993: "Jamaica had no intellectual property law, but they wrote one (with our help). Similarly the Dominican Republic. I sat down with their lawyer and together we wrote their copyright law." Such methods of drafting national-level legislation inevitably raise questions about undue influence from the private sector. Lobbyists for the IP industry have been successful in their efforts to secure legal backing in foreign countries to already existing regimes such as TRIPS, and private corporations are now able to act as watchdogs to foreign national legislation on behalf of the U.S. government. Trade warring Most countries included in the Priority Watch List and Watch List between 1996 and 2000 were requested by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America or International Intellectual Property Alliance. For