Brazil’s much-publicized proposal on to move forward the long-stalled World Trade Organization agriculture negotiations appears to be another casualty of WTO members’ inability to find consensus, said people familiar with the developments. Brazil appears to have pulled out all the stops trying to secure support from key countries like the United States, the European Union, China and farm offensive and defensive countries, in an effort to ensure its passage at the WTO’s General Council meeting earlier this week.
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a notice to customers of financial institutions about reporting beneficial ownership information.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade and the USDA is hosting a webinar on Wednesday, August 21, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. ET titled Lacey Act and Phase VII Implementation. The webinar will provide an overview of the Lacey Act, describe the 2008 amendments to the act covering plants and plant products and their requirements, and provide the latest updates on Phase VII of the Import Declaration Implementation Schedule.
House China hawks introduced legislation aimed at "ensuring transparency into the material and systemic risk posed by US investment in and reliance on China." The PRC Risk Transparency Act will require public companies with "meaningful exposure' to China to disclose what percentage of their revenue, profit, capital investment and supply chain is tied to the PRC. It also will require these companies to disclose their relationships with the Chinese Communist Party and with companies identified by the US government as national security threats or human rights violators.
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers, including the chairman and ranking member of the House Select Committee on China, unveiled legislation yesterday creating a new structure within the US government to prosecute international trade crimes. This bill would direct DOJ to establish a new structure dedicated to prosecuting nternational trade crimes in order to enhance US capabilities for detecting, investigating and prosecuting trade fraud, duty evasion, transshipment and other trade-related crimes.
The United States is asking Mexico to review whether workers at a Chinese-owned manufacturing facility located in Mexico are being denied worker rights. The request, under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s rapid response labor mechanism, seeks information on whether workers at the Impro Industries Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. facility in the city of Villa de Reyes in the State of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, are being denied the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining. Impro is a Hong-Kong based maker of cast and machined component parts for use in the aerospace, energy, medical, automotive, and agricultural industries,. Impro’s 'Phase One' Project features a 1,200,000 square feet facility, 45km south of the San Luis Potosi International Airport.
United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai this week hosted the 2024 U.S.-sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum (AGOA Forum) in Washington, D.C. The AGOA trade preference program overall has been a success, but is “showing some age,” making its upcoming reauthorization the perfect opportunity to think about how to improve it, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said earlier this week..
Members of the World Trade Organization have ended the first half of this year on a somber note of failure, with little or no consensus on any of the targeted negotiations, including disciplines on fisheries subsidies that led to the depletion of global fish stocks. Members failed to find a way forward on a planned second phase of disciplines on subsidies contributing to overcapacity and over fishing during a two-day meeting of the General Council that ended Tuesday.
OFAC announced a $7,452,501 settlement with State Street Bank and Trust Company on behalf of itself and its subsidiary, Charles River Systems, Inc. State Street agreed to settle its potential civil liability for 38 apparent violations of OFAC's Ukraine-/Russia-Related sanctions. The apparent violations involved invoices that were redated or reissued by Charles River between 2016 and 2020 for certain customers who were subject to Directive 1 of Executive Order 13662, as well as certain payments outside of the applicable debt tenor (maturity range) accepted by Charles River from these customers.
Legislation to ban Chinese-made connected vehicles from US military bases and other federal installations was introduced yesterday by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). The Countering Adversary Reconnaissance (CAR) Act would bar Chinese connected vehicles from much of the U.S., making it impractical and unprofitable to import them in the first place. The Countering Adversary …
A Florida man was cahrged with conspiring and acting as an agent of the PRC without notification to the Attorney General. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. From as early as 2012, Peng Li, 59 allegedly served as a cooperative contact working at the direction of officers of the Ministry of State Security to obtain information of interest to the PRC government.
A grand jury in Kansas City, Kansas, returned an indictment on Wednesday charging a fugitive North Korean national for his involvement in a conspiracy to hack and extort U.S. hospitals and other health care providers, launder the ransom proceeds, and then use these proceeds to fund additional computer intrusions into defense, technology, and government entities worldwide. Rim Jong Hyok worked for North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), a military intelligence agency, and participated in the conspiracy to target and hack computer networks of U.S. hospitals and other health care providers, encrypt their electronic files, extort a ransom payment from them, launder those payments, and use the laundered proceeds to hack targets of interest to the North Korean regime.
An Illinois woman was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison for conspiring to unlawfully export to Russia defense articles – including thermal imaging riflescopes and night-vision goggles – without a license in violation of the Arms Export Control Act. To conceal her unlawful activities, when Shifrin exported the defense articles to Russia, she listed fictitious sender names and addresses on the packages containing the defense articles, falsely identified the items in the packages as non-export-controlled items such as clothing, and concealed the defense articles in other items such as toolkits and kitchen appliances.
Other OFAC enforccement actions this week targeted ISIS facilitators in several African states, rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Guatemalan human smuggling network, and two members of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and related firms involved in the fentanly trade.
OFAC sanctioned a network of six individuals and five entities based in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), involved in the procurement of items supporting the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) ballistic missile and space programs.
All financial institutions at which Russian sovereign assets are located, and that know or should know of such assets, must provide notice of such assets to OFAC no later than August 2, 2024
The Departments of State and Commerce are each issuing separate but complementary proposed rules regarding personal services to foreign defense and intelligence activities. State's review of "defense service" in the ITAR focused on identifying activities of U.S. persons that provide a critical military or intelligence advantage such that they warrant control under the ITAR and are activities that are not currently subject to the ITAR; or are controlled under the ITAR, but the current control language would benefit from additional clarity..
The Bureau of Industry and Security is finalizing amendments to its Defense Priorities and Allocations System (DPAS) regulation as originally proposed on February 7, 2024 with minor technical amendments. This final rule is effective August 21, 2024. This final rule clarifies existing standards and procedures by which BIS may provide Special Priorities Assistance (SPA); revises Schedule I to provide transparency and differentiation between other departments' priorities jurisdiction and the Department of Commerce's jurisdiction; and provides technical edits to reflect certain non-substantive updates since the DPAS regulation was last amended in 2014.
A joint resolution of Congress to void and nullify the Commerce Department's “Revision of Firearms License Requirements” (89 Fed. Reg. 34680) passed out of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs July 11 on a vote of 24 to 23. Sponsored by Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn), the motion is a companion to his“Stop the Bureaucratic Ineptitude Shuttering Respectable and Upstanding Lawful Exporters Act” or the “Stop the BIS Rule Act” (HR 8208) introduced in May.
Commerce released two new proposed rules governing military and intelligence end uses and end users, including activities by U.S. persons, as well as amendments to the EAR controls on Foreign-Security End Users (FSEUs) and expanding controls on activities of “U.S. persons.” BIS is proposing amendments to control “support” furnished by “U.S. persons” to identified foreign- security end users. These rules propose to implement the broadest expansion of presidential export control authority since the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA) was signed in August 2018.
