On November 17, 2020, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued Venezuela-related General License 8G, “Authorizing Transactions Involving Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA) Necessary for the Limited Maintenance of Essential Operations in Venezuela or the Wind Down of Operations in Venezuela for Certain Entities.”  This general license continues to…

On November 9, 2020, the EU, pursuant to World Trade Organization (WTO) authorization, applied approximately $4 billion worth of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods in the latest chapter of the long-running dispute between the EU and the United States over government subsidies provided to both Boeing and Airbus. This retaliation follows an October 2020 WTO…

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has issued a proposed rule to add certain genetic element design software to the Commerce Control List. Specifically, on November 6, 2020, BIS issued a proposal to add “software” for the operation of nucleic acid assemblers and synthesizers already controlled under ECCN 2B352 that is capable of designing…

On November 5, 2020, the United States and Mexico announced that they had concluded consultations pursuant to their Joint Statement of May 17, 2019 to address the transshipment of grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) from outside North America into the United States through GOES-containing downstream products. The May 2019 Statement committed Mexico (and Canada) to implement…

On October 29, 2020, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a Federal Register notice announcing further amendments to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to revise the license review policy for items controlled for national security reasons destined to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Venezuela or the Russian Federation (Russia).…

On October 27, 2020, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published a final rule in the Federal Register amending the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR) to remove from the scope of generally authorized remittances any transactions involving “entities or subentities” identified on the U.S. Department of State’s Cuba Restricted…

On October 20, 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a finding determining that stevia extracts and derivatives, mined, produced, or manufactured in the People’s Republic of China (China) by the Inner Mongolia Hengzheng Group Baoanzhao Agriculture, Industry, and Trade Co., Ltd. (Baoanzhao) with the use of convict, forced or indentured labor, are being,…

On October 19, 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion before the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) in the matter of HMTX Industries LLC, et al. v. United States of America, et al. asking that the CIT adopt case management procedures to administer not only this case but also the approximately 3,600…

On October 19, 2020, the United States and Brazil agreed to an updated protocol for the 2011 Agreement on Trade and Economic Cooperation (ATEC) with three new annexes:  Customs Administration and Trade Facilitation, Good Regulatory Practices, and Anticorruption.  U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said that the protocol “uses the existing ATEC to establish common standards…

On October 15, 2020, the White House released a report, “National Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technologies,” outlining steps the United States will take to preserve its competitive edge in certain critical and emerging technologies. Noting in a statement the importance of U.S. dominance in the science and technology sectors, the White House…