House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said after a June 25 hearing on Mexican labor reform that the Democrats asking for changes to the NAFTA rewrite are asking for changes that are "relatively narrow." "Our hope is we can move with dispatch, get our concerns resolved, strengthen the agreement and move forward," he said, adding that trade deal votes "never get easy, putting them off."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced a bill on June 25 that would limit the ability of the executive branch to bypass congressional approval of foreign arms sales. The bill, called the Saudi Arabia False Emergencies Act, had bipartisan support and was advanced less than a week after the Senate voted to block billions of dollars worth of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that the Trump administration had announced May 24 (see 1906200052). The administration had used an emergency provision in the Arms Export Control Act to skip congressional approval.

Canada imposed sanctions on nine Nicaraguan officials under the country’s Special Economic Measures Regulations, Canada said in a June 21 press release. Canada announced the sanctions in response to “gross and systematic human rights violations committed in Nicaragua,” it said in a separate release. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also recently announced sanctions on four Nicaraguan government officials (see 1906210041). In fact, the Global Affairs Canada release said Canada is taking its actions in “coordination with the United States.”

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for June 17-21 in case they were missed.

The European Court of Justice on June 20 issued a ruling clarifying EU customs valuation using the transaction value of similar merchandise and deductive value methods. In its decision, the ECJ laid out the main criteria for deciding what constitutes similar merchandise, and found strict limitations apply to the time frame and allowable deductions for deductive value.

FedEx filed a lawsuit against the Commerce Department and the Bureau of Industry and Security for imposing export controls it says are “unconstitutional” and “impossible” to comply with, according to court records. The company also said BIS’s Entity List “imposes an overbroad, disproportionate burden on FedEx,” records show. The suit asks the court to stop Commerce from enforcing certain sections of the Export Administration Regulations on FedEx, to declare the EAR “unlawful” and to award FedEx any additional appropriate relief, including “costs and expenses.”

J.P. Morgan now offers an E-Customs Payment Solution meant to make it easier to make cross-border payments, the company said in an emailed June 20 news release. "Importers in China are required to provide supporting documents to their banks prior to making payments to overseas suppliers, a process that is often labor-intensive and time-consuming," the company said. "With the E-Customs Payment Solution, J.P. Morgan’s clients in China will only be required to send the payment instructions with linked customs declaration number. Using Application Programming Interface (API) technology, J.P. Morgan’s E-Customs Payment Solution will then retrieve the relevant customs declaration status in detail from the local authorities via the Shanghai International Trade Single Window in real time and process the payments automatically."

Winston & Strawn hired Christopher Monahan, previously with Crowell & Moring, as a partner, Winston said in a June 24 news release. Monahan "counsels clients across a broad scope of industries regarding compliance with the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), the sanctions programs administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)," the firm said.

In the June 24 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:

The European Union on June 24 published new regulations on technical requirements for its upgraded and upcoming electronic import and export filing systems. The notice outlines requirements for the EU and its member states on electronic systems required by the Union Customs Code, including the Customs Decisions system (CDS), Uniform User Management and Digital Signature (UUM&DS) system, European Binding Tariff Information (EBTI) system, Economic Operator Registration and Identification (EORI) system and Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) system. Areas covered include data access and exchange, as well as the scope of what each system should be used for. The EU recently delayed implementation of many electronic capabilities until 2022-25 (See 1904250056).