Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who's been working for months on a compromise bill to address national security tariffs, said that an introduction won't happen until after the August recess. "We're trying to get a consensus on [Section] 232s, that isn't the easiest thing," he said. "But we're making some progress." He said, speaking to reporters on June 19, that he'd had meetings on the bill that day.

The Mexican Senate voted to ratify the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on June 19, positioning Mexico to become first of the three countries to approve the renegotiated NAFTA. There have been some initial movements toward consideration of the deal by the U.S. Congress, and Canada is seen as likely following the U.S.'s lead before its legislature gets fully engaged (see 1906110040).

The U.S. is continuing sanctions on the Western Balkans beyond the June 26 expiration date, extending a national emergency first declared June 26, 2001, according to a June 18 White House press release. The White House cited the continued threat of people involved in “extremist violence” in the region and acts that obstruct the implementation of United Nations Security Council resolutions. The actions continue to pose an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security, the press release said.

Iran is reducing its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action because it said other JCPOA “parties do not abide by theirs,” according to a June 18 press release by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Russian Financial Society, a Russian financial services entity, after OFAC said it helped North Korea evade U.S. sanctions, Treasury said in a June 19 press release. Russian Financial Society provided or attempted to provide “financial, material, technological, or other support for” U.S.-sanctioned Dandong Zhongsheng Industry & Trade Co. Ltd, the press release said. Dandong Zhongsheng is owned by Foreign Trade Bank, North Korea’s “primary foreign exchange bank,” which is sanctioned by both the U.S. and the United Nations, Treasury said.

The day after President Donald Trump officially launched his re-election campaign, moderate Democrat Rep. Ron Kind warned the administration's top trade official that the China trade war is making voters in his home state of Wisconsin lose patience. Trump won Kind's district by 4 percentage points, and narrowly won Wisconsin in the Electoral College.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control will end its practice of allowing sanctions violators to satisfy OFAC penalties through payments to other agencies, changing how it calculates penalties in investigations that involve more than one enforcement agency, OFAC Director Andrea Gacki said.

Norton Rose rehired Stefan Reisinger, who was in the international trade practice at Morgan Lewis and at Norton Rose before that, the law firm said in a June 18 news release.

Uganda introduced several tax-related measures in its 2019 budget proposal, including regulations that would expand the list of goods that are exempt from value-added taxes, according to a June 17 report from KPMG. The measures would allow VAT exemptions for “aircraft insurance services, rice mills and agricultural sprayers, supplies of drugs and medicines, imported mathematical sets and certain other items used in education, woodworking machines, welding machines, sewing machines, certain feasibility studies, and earth-moving equipment,” KPMG said. The measures would also reduce the “withholding rate” of VATs to 6 percent, KPMG said. The changes are expected to take effect July 1.

Kenya is considering several tax- and trade-related measures that would impact imports and certain aspects of the country’s value-added tax regulations, according to a June 17 report from KPMG. The measures, included in Kenya’s 2019 budget proposal, would expand the definition of “supply of imported services” to apply to people who are not registered for VAT, the report said, and would expand the scope of VATs to include goods “made through the digital marketplace.” The measures would also change the “timing of the supply of imported goods” to include “the time the goods are removed from a special economic zone,” KPMG said. In addition, the measures would reduce the rate of the VAT withholding from 6 percent to 2 percent and increase the excise tax rate on alcohol and tobacco products. Lastly, the measures would allow tax exemptions for equipment used for the development of “solar and wind energy” and allow VAT exemptions for motherboards and “related components” made in Kenya and “services and machinery related to plastic recycling.”