Japan is approving exports for a semiconductor manufacturing material to South Korea days after removing the country from its list of trusted trading partners, stressing that South Korea’s removal from the list was not an export embargo, Japan’s trade minister Hiroshige Seko said during an Aug. 8 press conference. But Seko also said Japan will not hesitate to increase export restrictions on South Korea if it finds more “specific inappropriate cases” of South Korea’s export control regime, according to an unofficial translation of the press conference.

LIz Truss, the secretary of state for international trade in the United Kingdom, said her country is looking forward to "leaving the straitjacket of the EU," and said that a free trade agreement with the U.S. "is the inevitable next step." Truss, who met with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer during her visit to Washington, said they're trying to "get things moving."

There may not be a solution to the Japan-South Korean trade dispute, said James Schoff, a senior fellow for The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Schoff suggested that the rift between the two sides is not solely about export controls but is instead the result of a culmination of many factors -- including a decline in trust -- and may not be salvable.

The Japan-South Korea trade dispute may impact the U.S. and potentially require the intervention of U.S. export control officials, experts said during an Aug. 7 Heritage Foundation panel discussion. They also said it will be difficult for South Korea to get back on Japan’s so-called “whitelist” of preferential trading partners, a move that could hurt Japanese companies more than any other party.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control agreed on a $1.7 million settlement with PACCAR Inc., of Bellevue, Washington, for 63 violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran by PACCAR’s subsidiary, OFAC said in an Aug. 6 notice. The subsidiary, Netherlands-based DAF Trucks N.V., sold 63 trucks worth more than $5 million to European customers that DAF knew intended to sell the trucks to Iran, OFAC said.

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for July 29 - Aug. 2 in case they were missed.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Aug. 6 issued a set of Venezuela-related frequently asked questions, amended 12 general licenses, created 13 new general licenses and released a Venezuela sanctions guidance detailing which types of transactions are authorized between U.S. companies and Venezuela. The moves were in coordination with President Donald Trump’s Aug. 5 executive order that expanded certain sanctions on Venezuela.

President Donald Trump’s Aug. 1 executive order (see 1908020020) announcing a second round of sanctions on Russia under The Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act includes export licensing restrictions for certain Commerce-controlled goods and technologies, the State Department said. In a fact sheet issued Aug. 2, the agency said all license applications for exporting chemical or biological weapon-related items to Russian state-owned entities are subject to a policy of presumption of denial. License exceptions, however, will "continue to be available" to U.S. companies involved in existing contracts with Russian customers, the State Department said.

CBP updated its mitigation guidelines for export control seizures to include new mitigating factors, aggravating factors, a new list of remission terms and the elimination of the terms “technical violations” and “substantive violations,” CBP said in its updated July guidelines. In previous years, CBP distinguished between technical and substantive violations but said in its most recent guidelines that the terms were “confusing and misleading” to both CBP officers and the public because they were not used by other licensing agencies.

Japan officially approved removing South Korea from its so-called whitelist of trusted trading partners, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said Aug. 2, adding that it will begin enforcing the decision Aug. 28. The move was expected after Japan introduced a bill earlier this month as the two countries become embroiled in a trade dispute (see 1907300058).