The Commerce Department will approve more temporary licenses to U.S. exporters selling “general merchandise” to Huawei, U.S. National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said on CBS and Fox News on June 30, potentially providing relief to both U.S. firms and China’s telecommunications tech giant. Although specific details have not yet been released, Commerce plans to grant export licenses for products that China can easily get from other countries, including “various chips and software,” Kudlow said.

In the June 28 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:

The European Union and Mercosur on June 28 agreed to a trade deal that will eliminate most tariffs on trade between the two blocs, the European Commission said in a press release. “The agreement concluded today will cover a population of 780 million and cement the close political and economic relations between the EU and Mercosur countries,” the press release said.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency updated its "Request for Documentation Review form (5272)" with "an important change to the form to enhance the section for payment process," the agency said in a June 27 email. "While CFIA clients have been previously advised to refrain from providing credit card information on the form, specific instructions have now been included on the form to explain how payment can be made using a credit card as well as steps to follow to sign up for a CFIA account," it said.

Even if a deal is struck with China, things won't return to how they were before, a trade consultant and the National Foreign Trade Council CEO agreed while on a panel. Rufus Yerxa, CEO of the National Foreign Trade Council, told the American Association of Exporters and Importers Annual Conference June 28: "I fear we get to a situation where we can’t go back, and we can’t go forward, either."

The United Nations Security Council is renewing sanctions on the Democratic Republic of the Congo until July 1, 2020, it said June 26. The sanctions include trade bans on defense items and asset freezes. The council also extended until Aug. 1, 2020, the mandate of the Group of Experts, which provides reports to the council on the potential of additional or updated sanctions.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Nicolas “Nicolasito” Ernesto Maduro Guerra, the son of Nicolas Maduro, for being a government official of the “illegitimate” Venezuelan Maduro regime, Treasury said in a June 28 press release. Treasury said the younger Maduro is a member of Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly, which tries to “rewrite the Venezuelan constitution and dissolve Venezuelan state institutions.”

More than 25 industry associations are asking the Commerce Department to allow more time for public comments on Commerce’s next advance notice of proposed rulemaking for foundational technologies, which is expected in the coming weeks. The associations asked for a 90-day comment and review period in a June 27 letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

A new round of tariff cuts under the World Trade Organization’s expanded Information Technology Agreement take effect July 1, again lowering duties on information technology goods in some 50 countries around the world. For some countries, including the U.S., this third round marks the last set of tariff cuts under the expanded agreement, with all tariffs for covered goods now being set to zero. Other countries, particularly in the developing world, were given longer implementation periods, and tariff cuts stretch out until 2024.

A Commerce Department official allayed concerns from the U.S. industry that new export controls on emerging technologies will be overbroad, saying it will only look to control a "slice" of categories of technologies, not whole classifications.