The Federal Maritime Commission is making headway on implementing the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 and is preparing two new rules that will further revise or clarify how its regulations apply to carrier and shipping practices.
CBP hopes to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking to eventually mandate electronic export manifest (see 2207180041 and 2205060015) by the end of this year, said Jim Swanson, an agency official. The agency has written the regulations for ocean, air and rail manifest but is in the middle of a lengthy government review process before it can publish the NPRM in the Federal Register and officially request public comments, Swanson said.
Cambodia recently enacted a new food safety law that will affect imports, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council reported July 22. The law, which was signed in June, requires importers to submit an authorization certificate for certain foods, HKTDC said, adding the foods may also be subject to a “laboratory analysis.” Imported goods that don’t meet the new compliance requirements may be reexported, destroyed, replaced or reexamined, HKTDC said. Cambodia plans to issue a list of food items subject to the new procedures along with their import conditions.
The U.S. is increasingly struggling to attract greenfield foreign direct investment, which has fallen by more than 90% since the 1990s, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation said in a July report. ITIF, citing data recently released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, said foreign companies appear to be less willing to build new facilities or expand existing ones in the U.S.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a July 19 opinion denied Hong Kong-based apparel company Changji Esquel Textile's (CJE) bid for a preliminary injunction against its placement on the Commerce Department's Entity List, calling it "a Hail Mary pass." Judges Judith Rogers, Patricia Millett and Gregory Katsas held that CJE's claims that human rights violations are not proper grounds to be placed on the Entity List are not likely to succeed, upholding the district court's ruling saying the same thing.
Some of the Federal Maritime Commission’s proposed changes to its rules for Carrier Automated Tariffs (see 2205090006) are unnecessary and could place too heavy a burden on industry, two trade groups and a logistics company said in comments this month. The commenters were especially critical of a proposed change that would add more requirements to container documentation, and said they wouldn't support a proposal that would allow a non-vessel operating common carrier (NVOCC) to cross-reference the terms in a vessel-operating common carrier’s (VOCC) tariffs.
The joint alert issued last month by the Commerce and Treasury departments (see 2206280056) puts companies “on notice” about the types of red flags they should be monitoring for potential sanctions and export control evasion tactics, Lewis Brisbois said in a July alert. While the red flags in the alert aren’t exhaustive, companies should consider them alongside “all surrounding facts and circumstances” when filing a suspicious activity report to Treasury, the firm said, or while complying with U.S. export restrictions. “At the very least, ‘covered entities’ will need to conduct a fact-intensive analysis on these potential 'red flag' indicators to ensure compliance with U.S. law,” the firm said.
The U.K. is keeping holdover safeguards on five categories of steel products despite the tariffs violating Britain's World Trade Organization commitments, U.K. International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said in a June 29 speech to the House of Commons. When the U.K. left the EU, it kept its safeguards covering 19 categories of steel. Throughout 2021, the Trade Remedies Authority reviewed the measures, recommending the government remove safeguards on nine of those categories. In June 2021, the U.K. said it would extend the safeguards on 10 product categories for three years and remove them on four of the remaining nine, extending the safeguards for one year on the other five. The TRA then carried out additional analysis, leading to Trevelyan calling for the continuation of the tariffs on the five steel categories for another two years, until June 30, 2024.
Global supply chain issues could be alleviated with better data sharing and processing, experts said during a June 29 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness. But to overcome trust issues among companies reluctant to share data, some government intervention may be necessary, they said.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told an audience at the American Association of Exporters and Importers conference June 15 that his discussion draft of a Customs modernization bill elicited some consternation, but that it was shared because he was trying to figure out "how do we get stakeholders in a good place so that we can have a customs modernization package?"