China will ban hog and boar imports from South Korea after the country recently confirmed cases of African swine fever, according to a Sept. 19 report from Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency. The ban will include increased quarantine checks on packages and passenger baggage from South Korea, the report said, and the country will detain and seal off any containers or vehicles containing hog or boar-related products from South Korea found inside China.
South Korea officially removed Japan from its list of trusted trading partners, according to a report from The Hankyoreh. The report cited comments from Lee Ho-hyeon, South Korea’s director general of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy Trade Policy Bureau, who said the move took effect Sept. 18.
Dip Shipping Company, a New Orleans-based freight forwarder, agreed to plead guilty to antitrust violation allegations as part of a plea agreement, the Department of Justice said in a Sept. 17 news release. "Dip Shipping is the first company to be charged and to agree to plead guilty in the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation in the freight forwarding industry," the DOJ said. The company will pay a criminal fine of about $488,000. Some company executives had already pleaded guilty to the price fixing after being charged last year (see 1807050035), the DOJ said. Roberto Dip and Jason Handal were sentenced to prison terms in June.
Funding for the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. is covered in the continuing resolution that passed the House of Representatives on Sept. 19, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Sept. 18 that he hopes a long-term reauthorization can be achieved before Nov. 21, when the stop-gap funding measure ends.
A House bill would increase export controls on defense items to Hong Kong police, including “nonlethal crowd control items.” The bill, introduced Sept. 10, would require the Trump administration to restrict export license approvals of certain “covered defense articles and services” to the Hong Kong Disciplined Services. If the bill is passed, the covered items would be determined by the Commerce and State departments and sent in a report to Congress. The bill mentions “water cannon trucks, tear gas, rubber bullets, sponge grenades, beanbag rounds, batons, pepper spray, pepper balls and projectile launchers,” as possible options. “I am deeply concerned that American-made police equipment is being used to violently crack down on peaceful protesters in Hong Kong,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who helped introduce the bill, said in a statement. “We ought not to allow American companies to sell this equipment to foreign governments when we see evidence that it is being used for immoral and unjust purposes.” The bill is titled the “Placing Restrictions on Teargas Exports and Crowd Control Technology to Hong Kong Act,” or the PROTECT Hong Kong Act.
A Senate bill would increase export controls on electronic waste and ban exports and re-exports of the waste without a government authorization. The bill, S. 2448, introduced Sept. 9, would also require any approved electronic waste exports to only be exported for “reclamation, recall, or reuse.” Exporters would also have to file certain information in the Automated Export System, including a description and quantity of the exempted waste, the name of each country that will receive the waste, the name of the ultimate consignee and documentation that proves the consignee has “the necessary permits, resources, and competence to manage the exempted electronic waste items,” the bill said. Violators of the proposed regulations would face the same penalties as violators of the Export Administration Regulations. The bill is aimed at preventing the waste from becoming “the source of counterfeit goods that may reenter military and civilian electronics supply chains” in the U.S.
U.S. and India face significant trade tensions that won't be easily solved, a trade expert said, adding that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken more steps to close off trade than the country’s past two leaders. “I get asked, is India the next [U.S.] target?” said Rick Rossow, a senior adviser for U.S.-India policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Those of us that are in the trenches, there are already bombs dropping. There are already bullets whizzing by. It's pretty serious.”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., who leads the working group that aims to win changes to the NAFTA rewrite to make it more palatable to Democrats, said that "it's time to pick up the intensity of the negotiations" with the administration. "I would prefer now that the pace pick up," he said in an interview on Sept. 19, the day before the working group was to meet with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer for the first time since they received a counterproposal from him.
In the Sept. 18 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
The British government apologized after breaking a court ruling banning it from granting export licenses for defense goods to Saudi Arabia. In a Sept. 16 letter to the United Kingdom Committees on Arms Export Controls, Trade Secretary Lizz Truss said the U.K. allowed two “inadvertent breaches” of the license ban.