The Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence is requesting a nearly $25 million budget increase from the previous year, partly to help with staffing concerns, according to Treasury’s annual budget report. OTFI lists its “increasing role” in the Trump administration as justification for the increased budget. The agency is requesting about $165 million.

The Confederation of Mexican Customs Broker Associations (CAAAREM) recently issued a circular detailing recent changes to the Mexican customs regulations. The Mexican Tax Administration Service published the notice, the fifth such set of changes to the Mexican Foreign Trade Regulations, on March 30. The CAAAREM circular was posted by Mexican law firm Consorcio Juridico Aduanero.

Treasury’s March settlement with Stanley Black & Decker serves as a compliance guide for U.S. companies and represents an important peek into how the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control plans to issue enforcement settlements throughout 2019, according to an April 1 report by WilmerHale.

Canada appears set to impose a three-year safeguard duty on imports of heavy steel plate and stainless steel wire from most countries, but could soon refund safeguard duties collected on five other types of steel, after the Canadian International Trade Tribunal issued a mixed decision April 3 on whether to finalize provisional safeguard duties in place since October.

A Justice Department settlement with Honda Aircraft Company after Honda allegedly discriminated against non-U.S. citizens to try to comply with U.S. export laws serves as a cautionary tale for U.S. employers, according to an April 3 report from Covington & Burling. The case, announced in a Feb. 1 press release, resulted in a nearly $45,000 settlement payment from Honda Aircraft after it wrote in job postings that candidates were required to have a “specific citizenship status,” the press release said. The postings were based on the company’s “misunderstanding” of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and the Export Administration Regulations, the Justice Department said. Honda Aircraft was ordered to remove all “specific citizenship requirements from current and future job postings.”

The U.S. has "an immediate need" to secure lower agriculture tariffs for its producers because European, Canadian and Australian farmers are selling into Japan at lower tariffs than U.S. farmers can, said Wendy Cutler, the former lead negotiator for the U.S. in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Canada and Australia are advantaged now because they stayed in the TPP. Japan also recently put into force an EU-Japan free trade agreement. Cutler, now vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, spoke at a Washington International Trade Association program April 3 on the future of U.S.-Japan Trade.

The U.S. continues to pursue “vigorous engagement” with China to “increase the benefits” that U.S. businesses, service providers and consumers “derive from trade and economic ties” with the Chinese, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in its annual report on global foreign trade barriers (see 1904010045). China’s trade practices “in several specific areas,” especially forced technology transfer and the Made in China 2025 industrial program, continue to “cause particular concern” for U.S. “stakeholders,” USTR said.

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for March 25-29 in case they were missed.

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security would like to increase its funding by about $4 million for export administration (EA), the agency said in its Fiscal Year 2020 budget justification. That new money would be split between "Identifying and Reviewing Emerging Technologies" and "Addressing Increased Foreign Investment Reviews," it said. BIS is asking for funding for 21 new personnel, the agency said.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer touched on India’s potential retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. and criticized the country’s “significant tariff and nontariff barriers” in the 2019 National Trade Estimate on Foreign Trade Barriers. The 540-page report, released March 29, said India’s tariff barriers “impede imports of U.S. products into India” and was critical of India’s “complex” customs system and failure to “observe transparency requirements.”