Although the office of the U.S. Representative has already received nearly 1,500 comments on "worker-centered trade," the office has re-opened comments that closed Aug. 11. It is now accepting ideas on trade policies and actions to advance racial and gender equity, advance equity for rural communities or other underserved categories, as well as ideas on how to advance these values through stakeholder engagement.
Canada will participate as a third party in the U.S.-Mexico dispute over Mexico’s ban on genetically engineered corn in tortillas and dough, the country announced Aug. 25. Mary Ng, Canada’s trade minister, said she “shares the concerns of the United States that Mexico is not compliant with the science and risk analysis obligations under” the USMCA’s sanitary and phytosanitary measures chapter. “Canada believes that the measures taken by Mexico are not scientifically supported and have the potential to unnecessarily disrupt trade in the North American market,” Ng said.
A bill was introduced in the House that could lead to new export controls on genetic mapping technology and sanction entities in China and elsewhere involved in certain genetic mapping efforts. The bill would specifically direct the Commerce Department to deny licenses for those exporting these items to certain countries unless the exporter can submit documentation to the government "to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that, if the license is approved, the technology will not be used for human rights abuses or by an entity that has engaged in human rights abuses."
The Treasury Department is putting eight more military bases under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. after proposing the additions in May (see 2305040052). The expansion, effective Sept. 22, includes the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota that was the subject of a controversial CFIUS decision last year (see 2212150035, 2212290023 and 2208310066) as well as bases in Texas, California, South Dakota, Iowa and Arizona. CFIUS will be able to intervene in certain land purchases by foreign buyers if they are near any of those sensitive military bases.
China’s recently imposed export controls on gallium and germanium (see 2307050018) -- two metals used to produce semiconductors -- were for legitimate national security reasons, Beijing said this week, rebuking comments from U.S. officials and lawmakers who have said the restrictions have no justification (see 2307060053). In an Aug. 9 post on Chinese social media site Weixin, the National Security Ministry said the country's national security concerns stem from an incident in 2009, when an employee working for a global mining company in China tried to access “detailed technical analysis of dozens of Chinese iron and steel enterprises and accurate parameters of each production process.”
Conservation groups Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity took to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to ask the Department of Energy to reverse its approval of exports to be shipped from the Alaska liquefied natural gas project. The decision, which approves LNG shipments from Alaska's North Slope to Asia, failed to fully assess the project's "climate and environmental harms," the center said in a press release.
Lawmakers, business groups and think tanks gave a mixed bag of immediate feedback on the Biden administration’s executive order restricting outbound investments in China, with some applauding the government’s initial, cautious approach, and others expressing frustration that the restrictions don’t go far enough.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed a case against a United Arab Emirates cigarette filter and tear tape manufacturer following a more than $660,000 settlement agreement with the government for violating U.S. sanctions against North Korea . Essentra FZE Company Limited exported cigarette filter rods to North Korea and did not voluntarily disclose the violations, which the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control said constituted an egregious case (U.S. v. Essentra FZE Company, Dist. D.C. # 20-112).
An EU proposal to reform its customs system could make European trade “more efficient and less burdensome,” and would be “a key tool in risk analysis and risk management as a centralized data repository at the Union level,” Crowell & Moring said in an Aug. 2 client alert.
Colombia, Canada, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil recently announced antidumping and countervailing duty actions and decisions on certain products from mainland China, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council reported July 27.