August 2020

On August 17, 2020, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a Federal Register notice and Final Rule taking several actions directly impacting Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei) and its non-U.S. affiliates. Importantly, after issuing and extending a temporary general license since May 2019, BIS removed that license and replaced it…

On August 14, 2020, after an extensive review and unanimous recommendation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order directing that the already completed transaction that resulted in the acquisition of Musical.ly, now known as TikTok, by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. be unwound. The…

On August 12, 2020, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released an updated list of goods from the European Union (EU) that will continue to be subject to retaliatory tariffs as part of the dispute settlement at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over Airbus subsidies. In June 2020, USTR sought public comment on…

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) seeking public comment on the “Made in USA” claim and other unqualified U.S.-origin claims on product labels. The FTC’s statutory authority allows it to pursue enforcement actions to prevent unfair and deceptive “Made in USA” and other U.S.-origin claims. According to the…

In response to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order on Hong Kong Normalization that suspended the application of preferential trade status for Hong Kong (see Update of July 16, 2020), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a Federal Register notice on August 11, 2020, that changed the country of origin marking requirements for…

On August 7, 2020, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 11 individuals for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and restricting the freedom of expression or assembly of the citizens of Hong Kong. These actions were taken pursuant to Executive Order 13936, “The President’s Executive Order on Hong Kong Normalization” (…

On August 10, 2020, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC)  released its final report on miscellaneous tariff bill petitions it received under the 2016 American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act (AMCA).

As required by the AMCA, the USITC submitted the report to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means and the U.S. Senate Committee…

As promised by Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Department of Finance issued a notice of its intent to impose countermeasures to President Donald Trump’s reimposition of 10% Section 232 national security tariffs on imports of certain Canadian aluminum products. See Update of August 7, 2020. The products subject to countermeasures will be…

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) has issued a Federal Register notice extending and modifying the temporary final rule (“Rule”) establishing export restrictions on certain types of personal protective equipment (“PPE”) products and respirators (“Covered Products”) used in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  (For more information on the April…

On August 6, 2020, President Donald Trump issued two executive orders which will ban certain transactions with China-based mobile applications TikTok and WeChat. Both orders note that additional steps must be taken to deal with the national emergency with respect to the information and communications technology and services supply chain declared in Executive Order 13873…