Timely news and analysis of the latest developments in international trade law
On January 14, 2021, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a Federal Register notice announcing the addition and removal of certain Chinese and Russian entities from the Entity List and the Military End-User (MEU) List.
Notably, BIS added China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd. to the Entity List for its…
On January 15, 2021, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published in the Federal Register final regulations to implement a July 14, 2020 Hong Kong-related Executive Order. In Executive Order 13936, President Donald Trump determined that Hong Kong was no longer sufficiently autonomous from the People’s Republic of China…
On January 14, 2021, President Donald Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation announcing that the United States was extending safeguard measures, in the form of tariff-rate quotas (TRQs), on imports of large residential washers and various washer parts for an additional two years. Pursuant to Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974, President Trump implemented…
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has issued findings in three more Section 301 investigations of Digital Service Taxes (DSTs) adopted by Austria, Spain and the United Kingdom. In the reports, the USTR found that each of the DSTs “discriminates against U.S. companies, is inconsistent with prevailing principles of international taxation, and burden…
On January 13, 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a new regional withhold release order (WRO) on all cotton and tomato products grown and produced by entities operating in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Through its investigation, CBP found reasonable indications of the use of detainee or prison labor or other situations of…
Addressing a key 2016 campaign promise, President Trump transformed decades of U.S. trade policy by weaponizing tariffs, ramping up enforcement and focusing on bilateral trade in goods. Will President-elect Biden continue any of these policies or attempt to restore the multilateral…
On January 11, 2020, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced that the United States was re-designating Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism for “repeatedly providing support for acts of international terrorism in granting safe harbor to terrorists.” In a press release, the State Department noted that with this action, “we will once again hold…
On January 11, 2021, the Department of Commerce published in the Federal Register adjustments for each civil monetary penalty under which its bureaus and agency operate by law. The Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990 authorizes such adjustments “to ensure that [civil monetary penalties] continue to maintain their deterrent value and that [such…
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued an interim final rule (“Rule”) extending the temporary 0Y521 series export controls on software specially designed to automate the analysis of geospatial imagery, issued in January 2020. The Rule, which applies to geospatial imagery software specially designed for training a “Deep Convolutional Neural Network” to…
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has issued findings in its Section 301 investigations of Digital Service Taxes (DSTs) adopted by India, Italy and Turkey. In each report, the USTR found that the DSTs: (i) create “a significant new tax burden for U.S. companies, [and] taxes an unusually broad array of digital services”;…
