The Treasury Department on Oct. 22 announced new sanctions against Russia -- including against major energy companies Rosneft and Lukoil -- due to Moscow’s “lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.”
Asked whether the Trump administration is considering new software-related export controls on China in response to Beijing's sweeping export restrictions over rare earths, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: "I will confirm that everything is on the table."
EU and Chinese officials are planning to meet in Brussels in the “coming days” to discuss China’s new export controls over rare earths 2510090021), said Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s trade and economic security commissioner, in an Oct. 21 social media post. Sefcovic said Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao will travel to Europe, and the EU hopes to “find urgent solutions on export controls.”
To counter Hezbollah’s drug trafficking and other extensive illegal money-raising efforts in Latin America, the U.S. should encourage more countries in the region to designate the Lebanon-based group a terrorist organization, a former State Department official told lawmakers Oct. 21.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrat on a Russian secondary sanctions bill, said he's not discouraged that Senate Majority Leader John Thune is putting off a vote on the bill again. The bill has 85 sponsors in the Senate, and would give the president the ability to put up to 500% tariffs on the goods of countries that buy Russian fossil fuels; it also would expand sanctions on Russian officials.
The EU should expand export controls over advanced technology and impose new tariffs against China to counter Beijing’s sweeping export curbs on rare earths (see 2510090021), a major European think tank said this week.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Oct. 17 rejected both the government’s and law firm Husch Blackwell’s motions for judgment in a Freedom of Information Act dispute involving the Entity List. It gave the Commerce Department time to provide adequate justifications for its decisions to withhold certain information but said the ones it already provided weren’t enough (Husch Blackwell v. Department of Commerce, D.D.C. # 24-2733.
President Donald Trump told reporters that unless China stops fentanyl shipments, resumes buying U.S. soybeans and stops playing "the rare earth game with us," he won't lower tariffs.
Two Asia Society Policy Institute experts said the readouts from the call over the weekend between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng suggest the call was mostly logistical, planning for the next round of talks in Malaysia.
The U.K. added two people to its Haiti sanctions regime on Oct. 20. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation sanctioned Dimitri Herard, a "former Haitian police officer and head of the National Palace General Security Unit" who was charged by Haitian authorities with being complicit in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise; and Kempes Sanon, the leader of the Les Argentins gang.