Asia Pacific leaders and economic ministers endorsed reform of the World Trade Organization is their final statements emerging from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in San Francisco.
As the United States wrapped up its APEC host year, Asia Pacific ministers also stressed the importance to the global trading system of a successful WTO 13th ministerial meeting in February.
“We are committed to necessary reform of the WTO to improve all of its functions, including conducting discussions with a view to having a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024,” according to the 2023 APEC leaders’ Golden Gate Declaration.
Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) remained sharply divided on key agricultural negotiation issues, casting doubts on the possibility of a resolution at the WTO's 13th ministerial conference in Abu Dhabi, February 2024. During the Doha negotiating body's recent two-day meeting, discussions focused on public stockholding programs, the special safeguard mechanism, reform of agricultural domestic support, and updating the fixed external reference price based on 1986-88 data. Similar divisions in the past have hindered substantial outcomes in Buenos Aires (2017) and Geneva (2022).
Flushed from their successful campaign to scuttle the IPEF Trade Pillar, Senate Finance Committee Democrats Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Bob Casey (Pa) called on President Biden to keep in place the current Section 301 and Section 232 tariffs on imports from China.
The tariffs are important for combating anticompetitive behavior by China and other nonmarket economies, the two senators wrote in a letter to the President.
This briefing paper on dual-use and cyber-surveillance provides on overview of current EU export controls of dual-use items in general and cyber-surveillance items in particular, and what the approach is in countries such as the US, the UK and Japan. It explains the impact of the sanctions against Russia on the export of dual-use items and the use of cyber-surveillance in the conflict in the Ukraine.
Two Texas men were convicted at trial on Nov. 15 on charges of attempting to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), conspiracy to violate IEEPA, and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with their attempt to transact in sanctioned Iranian petroleum and launder the proceeds.
According to evidence presented at trial, in 2019 and early 2020, Zhenyu “Bill” Wang and Daniel Ray Lane engaged in a conspiracy to purchase petroleum from Iran, in violation of economic sanctions imposed by the United States under IEEPA.
They then planned to mask the origins of the petroleum and sell it to a refinery in China. The defendants also attempted to conceal their illegal transactions by obtaining foreign passports, engaging in sham contractual agreements, and conspiring to launder the proceeds of the sale through shell entities and offshore financial accounts.
