The State Department announced sanctions on three Iranian entities linked to weapons proliferation and eight entities involved in weapons smuggling from Iran to Yemen, the agency said Dec. 11. The announcement targets the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), its China-based subsidiary, E-Sail Shipping Company, and the Iranian airline Mahan Air. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control previously sanctioned E-Sail in 2018, Mahan Air in 2011 and IRISL in 2008.
Exports to China
The Chinese “irreversibly accelerated” their Made in China 2025 industrial program since the summer, taking a sharp protectionist turn as the U.S.-China trade war persisted with no negotiated breakthrough, Photronics CEO Peter Kirlin said on a fiscal Q4 call Dec. 11. “They ain't turning back,” said Kirlin, whose company drew more than half its Q4 revenue from the photomasks it supplied Chinese panel makers, produced at Photronics factories throughout Asia, including in Xiamen and Hefei, China.
Large European companies are increasingly side-stepping U.S.-China trade war tariffs by reorganizing supply chains, while smaller companies are finding creative ways to dodge tariffs or simply eat the costs, according to a Dec. 9 report from the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. The fact that European companies have “negated” the effects of trade war tariffs “only serves to highlight the futility of bilateral tariffs in a global marketplace,” said Joerg Wuttke, president of the Chamber. “Repetitive swings of the tariff hammer have proven anything but strategic.”
The government of Canada issued the following trade-related notices as of Dec. 11 (note that some may also be given separate headlines):
In the Dec. 11 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Dec. 2-6 in case you missed them.
Hong Kong Customs recently seized about $6.4 million worth of smuggled frozen meat en route to China, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service said in a report released Dec. 6. Customs authorities seized the shipments, which weighed 540 metric tons, in Hong Kong waters after they were smuggled onto four fishing boats off of a Hong Kong pier, the report said. The fishing boats did not have refrigeration facilities, USDA said, and the meat was composed of “high-value beef products” from “various countries,” including the U.S. and Europe. The agency called it the “largest detection of smuggled meats both in terms of value and volume in the past decade.” The meats included cuts of beef such as “shanks, ribs” and “round,” but no pork.
In the Dec. 10 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
Telefonaktiebtolaget LM Ericsson, a multinational telecommunications company based in Sweden, was fined more than $1 billion for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Justice Department said in a Dec. 6 press release. The penalty, stemming from a scheme to bribe government officials and falsify records, includes more than $520 million in criminal penalties and a $540 million penalty owed to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The U.S. and Vietnam signed a Customs Mutual Assistance Agreement meant to “further strengthen bilateral cooperation on security and the facilitation of lawful trade,” CBP said in an emailed Dec. 9 news release. “This agreement is a critical step forward in our economic and security partnership with Vietnam,” CBP Deputy Assistant Commissioner for International Affairs Erik Moncayo said. “The CMAA will enable the U.S. and Vietnam to more effectively combat terrorism and transnational crime while facilitating increasing volumes of lawful commerce.” The U.S. now has CMAAs with 82 countries, it said. In recent months, Vietnam has been trying to crack down on country of origin fraud and transshipment schemes that have become especially more frequent since the ramping up of U.S.-China trade tensions (see 1908280043).