U.S. sanctions on Iran will force the country to come to the negotiating table but may be permanently damaging U.S. relationships with other trading partners, said James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a current board director for the Atlantic Council.
Iran said it may take a “third step” to further breach the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action if the agreement’s parties do not do more to mitigate the U.S.’s 2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA, the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in an Aug. 1 press conference. Iran also called on the agreement's parties to help mitigate the impacts of U.S. sanctions. “Sanctions make fulfilling some of our promises harder … [but] one of the opportunities that sanctions provide us is increased empathy and cooperation among us,” Iran said. Iran last month surpassed the enriched uranium limit that was agreed to as part of the JCPOA, sparking concern from the European Union and additional threats of sanctions by the U.S. (see 1907080019).
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Aug. 3 issued a “Russia-related directive” and a set of frequently asked questions to pair with President Donald Trump’s Aug. 1 executive order on chemical and biological weapons sanctions.
President Donald Trump’s Aug. 1 executive order (see 1908020020) announcing a second round of sanctions on Russia under The Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act includes export licensing restrictions for certain Commerce-controlled goods and technologies, the State Department said. In a fact sheet issued Aug. 2, the agency said all license applications for exporting chemical or biological weapon-related items to Russian state-owned entities are subject to a policy of presumption of denial. License exceptions, however, will "continue to be available" to U.S. companies involved in existing contracts with Russian customers, the State Department said.
CBP updated its mitigation guidelines for export control seizures to include new mitigating factors, aggravating factors, a new list of remission terms and the elimination of the terms “technical violations” and “substantive violations,” CBP said in its updated July guidelines. In previous years, CBP distinguished between technical and substantive violations but said in its most recent guidelines that the terms were “confusing and misleading” to both CBP officers and the public because they were not used by other licensing agencies.
Imports from China to the U.S. fell 12 percent in the first half of 2019 compared with the January-June period in 2018, and exports to China fell by nearly 19 percent, a new Commerce Department report found. Although imports and exports to Canada were also down, Canada has now surpassed China as the second-largest U.S. trading partner in goods. Mexican imports were up 6.7 percent in the first half the year, and it is now the top trading partner in goods, with $311 billion in two-way trade from January to June. Canada was at $306 billion, despite a decline in both import and export volume. China's two-way trade with the U.S. was close to $290 billion.
Kathie Leonard, a National Council of Textile Organizations board member and president and CEO of Auburn Manufacturing, was appointed to the Export-Import Bank 2019 Advisory Committee, the NCTO said Aug. 2. Leonard will serve as the committee's U.S. textile industry representative and will be part of a team that will make recommendations on export financing products to the bank's board of directors, NCTO said.
Britain will create up to 10 "freeports" to reduce costs and boost trade after it leaves the European Union, the country said Aug. 1. Ports and airports across the United Kingdom can bid to become one of the freeports, the country said, and the U.K. will have a Freeports Advisory Panel composed of the ministers of the Department of International Trade and HM Treasury, along with trade and business experts, some of whom were identified in the release.
German customs seized more than $1 billion worth of cocaine in a container shipped from Uruguay, according to an Aug. 1 Associated Press report. The drugs, about 5 tons, were seized in mid-July, when customs officers checked a container listed as soya beans that was en route from Montevideo to Antwerp, Belgium, the report said. The container held black sports bags with more than 4,000 packets of cocaine in 211 bags, the report said, which was Germany’s biggest cocaine single seizure of cocaine to date.
President Donald Trump held a press conference Aug. 2 at the White House with European officials and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to announce an increase in tariff-free access to U.S. hormone-free beef in the European Union. The changes to the EU's tariff rate quotas will go into effect after the European Parliament approves hem, which is expected in the fall. It was originally announced by the EU in June (see 1906140026).