Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing issued guidance that includes information on the effects of sanctions on issuers listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. A section on trade or economic sanctions details requirements for disclosure to investors and the ramifications of exposure to sanctioned companies and businesses.
The Department of the Treasury is “initiating a renewal of the public certificate securing the www.treasury.gov website,” which includes the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s “sanctions list downloads,” OFAC said in a May 1 technical notice. The certificate is being replaced May 16 at 9 p.m. EDT and will take about three to six hours for the "replacement certificate to be distributed worldwide,” the notice said. “If your application pins or otherwise trusts the serial number of the existing certificate as part your application functionality, you may need to update your configuration to trust the renewed certificate,” OFAC said. Questions should be directed to O_F_A_C@treasury.gov or the tech support hotline at 1-800-540-6322.
U.S. economic sanctions are on a path toward losing power and impact, potentially undercutting a variety of tools used in U.S. foreign policy, according to a study published April 29 by the Center for a New American Security. The study, “Economic Dominance, Financial Technology, and the Future of U.S. Economic Coercion,” examines the current state of U.S. economic sanctions and makes several predictions, portraying a muddy outlook for the future of U.S. sanctioning tools. “If policymakers want to be able to continue deploying coercive economic tools effectively … they must ... get ahead of trends that could, if left unchecked, weaken some of the most important tools of U.S. foreign policy,” the study said.
Reps. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, are working on legislation that would strengthen U.S.-imposed sanctions on Russia, they said during a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting May 1. Engel said they are planning to introduce a bill that will “protect America’s interests, ramp up the targeted sanctions, enhance diplomacy and counter propaganda efforts to meet the Russian threat.” McCaul said he and Engel had breakfast with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier that day and said “there’s no doubt” Pompeo “looks at Russia as a great threat” to the U.S. “I don't think this is a partisan issue,” McCaul said. “I hope we can pass legislation out of this committee.”
Maersk will offer a new customs clearance online shipping management platform in Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom and Spain, the company said in a news release. “This new one-stop-shop allows us to timely and efficiently handle export and import declarations for our customers," said Vincent Clerc, chief commercial officer of A.P. Moller-Maersk. "The solution provides downstream benefits of full governance and compliance, eliminates the need to provide a quote as pricing is displayed online, saving three to five minutes per quote.” The company plans to expand the service to the rest of the world by the end of the year. "It saves our customers time, money and headaches reducing the number of intermediaries they deal with from three or four to just one as well as paperwork which subsequently reduce the time spent on transactional procedures," Clerc said. "Time saved they can then devote to grow their businesses.”
The World Customs Organization issued the following release on commercial trade and related matters:
Algeria revised its list of goods subject to temporary safeguard duties, removing a 30 percent tax on tree nuts, according to an April 25 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture' Foreign Agricultural Service. The change, made April 21, is expected to expand the U.S. export market for nuts, peanuts, butter and dried fruits, USDA said. The move comes less than a month after Algeria announced it was lifting a 2018 import ban on about 850 products and replacing it with temporary safeguard duties (see 1904160013). USDA has called tree nuts a "key" U.S. export to Algeria, which has imported an average of $33 million worth of U.S. tree nuts over the 2009-2017 calendar years.
In the April 30 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
The European Union is setting to almost zero its long-standing retaliatory tariffs on certain U.S. products for U.S. distributions of antidumping and countervailing duties to affected U.S. industries, it said in a notice. With distributions amounting to only a few thousand this year, the tariff, which applies to corn of EU subheading 0710.40.00, jeans of EU subheading 6204.62.31, mobile cranes of heading 8705.10.00 and eyeglasses frames of former subheading 9003.19.00, will fall to 0.001%, down from 4.3% last year. The new tariff rates take effect May 1.
The European Court of Justice on April 30 upheld a controversial provision of the recent trade agreement between the European Union and Canada, clearing the way for full ratification of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. The court ruled that the investment court system set out in CETA does not conflict with EU treaties. “The decision by the Court means that no changes have to be made to the text of the EU-Canada agreement and Member States' ratifications can proceed,” the European Commission said in a press release. “Equally, no change will be required in the ICS provisions included in the agreements with Singapore, Mexico and Vietnam. The Commission will continue to negotiate the Investment Court System in bilateral agreements with other partners,” the release said. “The agreement with Canada is under provisional application since September 2017 and can only enter fully into force once ratified by all Member States and concluded by the Council.”