Trump tariffs

Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking in Beijing to a group of 5,000, including 37 countries' prime ministers, presidents and vice presidents, said that China will continue to reform its economy in a number of ways, and that it intends to increase imports of good and services. According to an official English translation of the April 26 speech, Xi said, "China is both a global factory and a global market. With the world's largest and fastest growing middle-income population, China has a vast potential for increasing consumption. To meet our people's ever-growing material and cultural needs and give our consumers more choices and benefits, we will further lower tariffs and remove various non-tariff barriers."

President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will not ratify the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. Trump made the announcement during a speech at a National Rifle Association of America event on April 26. The White House said the treaty "cannot achieve its chief objective of addressing irresponsible arms transfers if these major arms exporters" -- including Russia and China -- "are not subject to it at all." The U.S. signed onto the treaty in 2013, but it was never ratified by the Senate as required. "The United States export controls have long been considered the gold standard for engaging in responsible arms trading and we will continue to use them under our own laws," the White House said.

China’s progress toward its satellite ambitions show the need for stricter export controls, stronger collaboration on those controls with U.S. allies, and more staffing and funding for U.S. enforcement agencies, panelists said during a meeting on U.S. space-related export controls. The discussion, part of a series of panels hosted by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on April 25, was billed as a conversation on China’s military-civil fusion. Lorand Laskai, a researcher at the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology, presented a dire outlook for the state of U.S.-China commercial space competition, saying China poses a major threat to U.S. export controls.

UPS, “like most other U.S. multinationals,” advocates for “fair and balanced trade,” CEO David Abney said on a Q1 earnings call April 25. The China-U.S. trade “uncertainty” is “prompting softer industry forecasts” in the Asia-Pacific region, he said. “We certainly encourage leaders of the two countries to find solutions that support increased two-way trade,” and also “assuring that many U.S. companies have access to export to China,” he said. Some UPS customers “have adjusted their supply chain” to mitigate the higher costs of the Section 301 tariffs and retaliatory Chinese duties, and to “adapt to changing trade dynamics,” he said. China economically “is still strong, maybe not as strong as in previous years,” he said. There are “a lot of developments” taking place in two-way trade between the U.S. and China, but also between “China and the rest of the world,” he said. That “sometimes gets lost in the China-U.S. discussions,” he said. “We think it gives us plenty of opportunities to focus and to apply our strategic imperatives” in e-commerce, he said. “We feel good about the economy for the rest of the year.”

Canada and Colombia were removed from the priority watch list for intellectual property violations, and Tajikistan moved off the watch list, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's annual review of countries' policies on patents, trade secrets, counterfeits and piracy. Saudi Arabia was moved up to the priority watch list because of deteriorating conditions there, including "rampant satellite and online piracy," a USTR official said April 25.

Four Chinese nationals were arrested in Singapore after they concealed alcohol shipments from China as soy sauce and did not pay tariffs, according to an April 23 notice from Singapore Customs. The men were involved in a scheme that imported more than 9,000 bottles of “duty-unpaid liquor” packed in more than 600 boxes, the notice said. The importers stored the boxes in an industrial building before Customs officers checked the goods and discovered the smuggling scheme, according to the notice. Singapore Customs said the men evaded about $186,000 worth of duties and about $17,000 worth of the country’s Goods and Services Tax. Importers who fail to pay taxes and duties can be fined “up to 40 times the amount” evaded and face a maximum six-year prison sentence, the notice said. “We will spare no effort in going after sellers as well as buyers of duty-unpaid liquor,” Assistant Director-General of Customs Yeo Sew Meng said in a statement.

China’s General Administration of Customs (GAC) issued notices announcing changes to its outward processing program and simplified entry and exit for certain goods in its comprehensive bonded zones, according to KPMG’s monthly China customs update. The agency also announced the expansion of a pilot program for TIR carnets, and Shanghai customs announced that export declarations will now be accepted as part of a pilot for advance declaration and expedited processing. Highlights are as follows:

The United Kingdom hopes to reach a deal with South Korea to maintain the effects of the European Union-South Korea Free Trade Agreement should the U.K. leave the EU with no transition deal, the U.K. Department for International Trade (DIT) said in guidance issued April 23. “The UK is seeking to agree arrangements with South Korea to ensure trade continues with minimal disruption after the UK leaves the EU,” with “minimal changes to tariffs and quotas, even if the UK leaves the EU without a deal,” the guidance said. If no deal is reached, trade between the U.K. and South Korea will be subject to World Trade Organization most-favored nation rates, it said.

Dozens of agriculture trade groups and companies wrote to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to tell him that "the U.S. food and agriculture industry is increasingly disadvantaged by competing regional and bilateral agreements with Japan that have already been implemented, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the European Union-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EU-Japan EPA)."

The Trump administration's decision to end exemptions for Iranian oil sanctions will have a “more tangible impact on business” than many of the administration's previous sanctions designations against Iran, according to Johann Strauss, an international trade lawyer at Akin Gump. The move, announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on April 22, was aimed at choking off Iran’s oil exports and came about a week after the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it was designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (see 1904220021).