Testing for commodity jurisdiction requests in the State Department’s Defense Export Control and Compliance System (DECCS) won’t begin until the week of March 25, the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls said in an updated message on its website. The message had previously said testing would begin March 20 (see 1903200046). “Another announcement will be posted when the system is available for testing,” DDTC said.

Valery Kosmachov was extradited from Estonia to face federal charges in the U.S. related to a "scheme to illegally procure sophisticated electronic components" and smuggle them to Russia, the Department of Justice said in a March 20 news release. The indictment was filed in September 2017 but was only unsealed on March 20, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. Kosmachov was arrested in September 2018 and extradited to the U.S. on March 14, the DOJ said.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control updated its Specially Designated Nationals List while also issuing an updated guide on “addressing North Korea’s illicit shipping practices,” which includes risk mitigation measures and a summary of penalties for violators, according to a March 21 notice. The changes made to OFAC’s SDN list include the additions of three individuals associated with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an update to the SDN listing for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and the addition of two Chinese entities that violated North Korean sanctions regulations. The two Chinese entities are Dalian Haibo International Freight Co. and Liaoning Danxing International Forwarding Co., according to the notice.

The Federal Maritime Commission released a notice of the filing of the following agreements under the Shipping Act of 1984. Interested parties may submit comments on the agreement by email to Secretary@fmc.gov, or by mail to the Secretary, Federal Maritime Commission, Washington, DC 20573, within 12 days of publication in the Federal Register, that is, by April 1.

The World Customs Organization issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:​​

In the March 20 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:

There seems to be some confusion over whether Authorized Economic Operator trusted trader status will continue to offer the same benefits to United Kingdom participants after March 29 if there's a no-deal Brexit, the BBC said in a March 19 report. While some have emphasized that AEO status could ease trade frictions after Brexit, the European Commission said in a notice last year that AEO authorizations from the U.K. would no longer be considered valid in the EU after Brexit. There's been an increase in U.K. AEO applications in recent months, but the U.K. is now urging companies to take part in the U.K.'s Transitional Simplified Procedures instead, the BBC said. "AEO status will only suit traders that regularly interact with customs and carry out high volumes of customs transactions," an HM Revenue and Customs spokesman told the BBC. "For most UK firms TSP will be the most practical system to import into the UK from the EU if we leave without a deal."

The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices as of March 20 (note that some may also be given separate headlines):

At a recent Beijing trade conference, Chinese Assistant Minister of Commerce Ren Hongbin said that the country plans to “enhance the quality of foreign trade” to steer out of China’s “complicated and severe” trade environment, according to a March 19 press release from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. Ren introduced a broad 10-step plan to achieve this, according to the release, which includes expanding imports, promoting “high quality development of foreign trade” and increasing “structural reform of foreign trade.” Ren also suggested supporting and exploring “new modes of trade,” such as “cross-border e-commerce.”

India will delay its ban on all scrap plastic imports for at least five months, moving the ban’s start date to the end of August, according to a report from the website Resource Recycling. The plastic ban was originally announced on March 6, the report said, as India cited environmental concerns and hoped to boost domestic production. A memo from India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change said that the reason for the delay was “to ensure smooth compliance,” the report said. The ban ends previous exemptions that allowed plastic imports by Indian business in “certain designated economic development districts,” the report said. The U.S. exported 294 million pounds of scrap plastic to India last year, according to the report, composing about 12 percent of the U.S.’s total plastic scrap exports.