The Food Safety Inspection Service will soon begin collecting fees for export certificates it issues through the Public Health Information System Export Component, it said in a notice. Effective June 1, FSIS will collect a $4.01 application fee for applications submitted through the system. FSIS continues to incrementally add countries to the system, which allows exporters to electronically submit, track and manage their export applications, FSIS said. The initial deployment of the PHIS Export Component in June 2018 covered certificates for Afghanistan, Andorra, Bahamas, Bolivia, Burundi, Cape Verde, Cook Islands, Ethiopia, French Guiana, Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Mozambique, San Marino, Tanzania, Uganda; additional countries added as of May 20 include Angola, Antarctica, Aruba, Bhutan, Botswana, Bouvett Island, Brunei Darussalam, Christmas Island, Comoros, Eritrea, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, French Southern and Antarctic Islands, Greenland, Guernsey, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Isle of Man, Jersey, Lesotho, Liechtenstein and Vietnam.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two Venezuelan officials who it called “corrupt [Nicolas] Maduro insiders,” according to an April 26 press release. OFAC added Jorge Alberto Arreaza Montserrat, Venezuela’s minister of Foreign Affairs, and Carol Bealexis Padilla de Arretureta, a Venezuelan court judge, to the Specially Designated Nationals List.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control is issuing regulations for sanctions surrounding foreign interference in U.S. elections, according to an April 26 notice. The regulations require the director of national intelligence to investigate any information that points to the possibility of foreign interference within 45 days after the conclusion of U.S. elections and recommend “remedial actions” for the U.S. government to take, other than sanctions. The regulations also list provisions for sanctioning those involved in election interference, including blocking any U.S.-related “property and interest.”

President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will not ratify the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. Trump made the announcement during a speech at a National Rifle Association of America event on April 26. The White House said the treaty "cannot achieve its chief objective of addressing irresponsible arms transfers if these major arms exporters" -- including Russia and China -- "are not subject to it at all." The U.S. signed onto the treaty in 2013, but it was never ratified by the Senate as required. "The United States export controls have long been considered the gold standard for engaging in responsible arms trading and we will continue to use them under our own laws," the White House said.

The European Union plans to temporarily end collection of antidumping and countervailing duties for some products that are subject to steel safeguards, it said in a notice in the April 26 Official Journal. For goods that are subject to AD/CV duties at a level below the 25 percent safeguard on steel recently established by the EU, the EU “considers appropriate that no anti-dumping or countervailing duty should be payable during the relevant period,” the notice said.

China’s progress toward its satellite ambitions show the need for stricter export controls, stronger collaboration on those controls with U.S. allies, and more staffing and funding for U.S. enforcement agencies, panelists said during a meeting on U.S. space-related export controls. The discussion, part of a series of panels hosted by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on April 25, was billed as a conversation on China’s military-civil fusion. Lorand Laskai, a researcher at the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology, presented a dire outlook for the state of U.S.-China commercial space competition, saying China poses a major threat to U.S. export controls.

UPS, “like most other U.S. multinationals,” advocates for “fair and balanced trade,” CEO David Abney said on a Q1 earnings call April 25. The China-U.S. trade “uncertainty” is “prompting softer industry forecasts” in the Asia-Pacific region, he said. “We certainly encourage leaders of the two countries to find solutions that support increased two-way trade,” and also “assuring that many U.S. companies have access to export to China,” he said. Some UPS customers “have adjusted their supply chain” to mitigate the higher costs of the Section 301 tariffs and retaliatory Chinese duties, and to “adapt to changing trade dynamics,” he said. China economically “is still strong, maybe not as strong as in previous years,” he said. There are “a lot of developments” taking place in two-way trade between the U.S. and China, but also between “China and the rest of the world,” he said. That “sometimes gets lost in the China-U.S. discussions,” he said. “We think it gives us plenty of opportunities to focus and to apply our strategic imperatives” in e-commerce, he said. “We feel good about the economy for the rest of the year.”

Clete Willems, former deputy director of the National Economic Council who represented the U.S. during China trade talks this year, will join Akin Gump as a partner in June, the firm announced April 25. “The trade landscape has rarely been as important to companies around the world as it is now, and Clete will be an invaluable resource for clients seeking to navigate this terrain,” said Brian Pomper, co-head of Akin Gump’s public law and policy practice.

Daniel Feldman, previously with Akin Gump, joined the Covington & Burling Global Problem Solving group, the law firm said in a news release. Feldman's practice includes "advising on global political risks, corporate social responsibility and sustainability matters, and compliance with U.S. law and international best practices on global policy concerns, including sanctions and anti-corruption efforts," it said. He was a special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the State Department before joining the private sector.

The United Kingdom is negotiating agreements with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Algeria to continue current trade relations in the event that the U.K. leaves the European Union with no transition deal, the UK Department for International Trade said on two new webpages on trade with the countries. “If agreed, these arrangements could maintain the effects” of the EU trade deals with Bosnia and Algeria after a no-deal Brexit, it said. If the U.K. leaves with no deal and no agreement is reached with each respective country, each of the existing trade agreements would no longer apply, the pages said. “This would mean the UK would not have preferential trade arrangements for exports to” Algeria and Bosnia. The U.K. is also making efforts to sign a similar deal with South Korea (see 1904230030), and already has such deals in place with several other countries, including Switzerland.