Vietnam is eliminating import tariffs on crude oil products starting Nov. 1, Vietnam's Customs’ mouthpiece CustomsNews said in a Sept. 23 report. The import tariff rate on crude oil is currently 5 percent.

A bipartisan group of senators asked U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to secure better access for pecan exporters to India as the two countries negotiate a trade deal. In a Sept. 20 letter, the senators urged Lighthizer to work to remove the “existing barriers” pecan exporters are facing, including a 36 percent Indian import tariff, compared with 10 percent tariffs on pistachios and almonds.

President Donald Trump, just before meeting with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York at the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, answered a reporter's question on whether a trade announcement is coming by saying: "Bob Lighthizer, who's right here, was negotiating with India and their very capable representatives. And I think very soon we'll have a trade deal. We'll have the larger deal down the road a little bit, but we will have a trade deal very soon."

President Donald Trump said he is not planning to impose additional sanctions on North Korea, saying the two sides are “getting along very well.”

United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for a new nuclear deal with Iran and pointed to Donald Trump as the person who should negotiate it, in a Sept. 23 interview with NBC. "I think there's one guy who can do a better deal ... and that is the president of the United States. I hope there will be a Trump deal,” Johnson told NBC.

The United Kingdom plans to impose sanctions on countries that “arrest or intimidate dissident journalists,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in an article for The Telegraph. Raab said the "Magnitsky" sanctions will take effect after Brexit, according to a Sept. 23 post on the EU Sanctions blog, and will include bans on U.K. entry and asset freezes.

The European Union has been “very slow” to impose more sanctions on Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro-led regime, a senior State Department official said Sept. 23. The U.S. wants the EU to follow through on sanctions it said it would impose if the Norway-brokered negotiation broke down between the Maduro regime and the opposition party, the official said. The talks ended earlier this month. “We all understand that they have their procedures and that it’s hard with 28 countries,” the official said of the EU, “but I would hope to see movement in October.”

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Sept. 24 sanctioned four entities and four vessels for operating in Venezuela's oil sector.

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Sept. 16-20 in case they were missed.

L3 Harris Technologies reached a $13 million settlement with the State Department for violating the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, according to an order released Sept. 23 by the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. The violations by Harris Corporation, a technology and defense contractor, occurred before it officially merged in July with L3 Technologies, an aerospace and defense company.