The European Union is amending its regulations on plant and animal health and protection to add new requirements for border controls on hay, straw and composite foods, it said in a notice published in the March 25 Official Journal. Specifically, the EU is amending a list of categories of goods subject to “official controls, at the border control post of first arrival into the Union,” to include “hay and straw and foodstuffs containing both products of plant origin and processed products of animal origin (‘composite products’),” the notice said. The changes apply from Dec. 14, 2019.

The European Union is making several changes to its customs regulations that will take effect in 2020, according to a notice published March 25 in the EU Official Journal. Among other amendments to the EU’s Union Customs Code, temporary storage will be added to the list of customs procedures covered by penalty “extinguishment” provisions, timelines will be changed for invalidating certain customs declarations, and new duty-free provisions will be added for certain goods exported for repair or alteration.

The Salvadoran Central Bank (BCR) recently announced it would use an exclusively online permit system for importing food and beverage products, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service said in a report posted on March 25. "The BCR announced that import permit requests for food and beverage products would have to be requested online," the FAS said. "This service will be available to all food and beverage importers through the BCR’s Single-Window for Foreign Trade (Ventanilla Unica de Comercio Exterior). According to BCR staff, the implementation of this new virtual procedure will reduce the request time from the 27 days averaged in 2011 to approximately 1 minute in 2019."

The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices as of March 25 (note that some may also be given separate headlines):

Natural Resources Canada released an updated list of Harmonized System tariff codes that will be affected by coming energy efficiency regulations, the Canada Border Services Agency said in an emailed message. The list no longer includes HS code 8504.40.1000, it said. The "list of HS codes for regulated energy-using products has been revised to reflect the Amendment 14 to the Energy Efficiency Regulations coming into force on April 30, 2019," it said in the notice.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) released an updated list of Harmonized Schedule codes that are subject to the agency's requirements, the Canada Border Services Agency said in a March 25 email. The only updates, which are effective April 1, provide a new range of codes -- 2914.11.0000 to 2914.19.0000 -- instead of only 2914.19.0000, according to the revised list.

Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng said China is looking to expand imports, lower tariffs and “facilitate customs clearance to better share the opportunities” with the rest of the world, according to a March 24 report by Xinhua, a state-run news agency. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the China Development Forum in Beijing, Han also said China will strengthen intellectual property rights protections while also allowing “foreign companies to achieve better development in fair competition” in China, Xinhua’s report said. "We will continue to relax controls over foreign investment access, reduce the negative list for foreign investment, and allow wholly foreign-invested enterprises in more areas," Han said, according to the report. The report also said China will add a new section to the “Shanghai pilot free trade zone” and introduce policies to build a “Hainan free trade port.”

Chinese Customs seized more than 300,000 tons of smuggled imported trash in a scheme that involved at least 115 suspects and 22 smuggling groups, according to a report by state-run news agency Xinhua. China imports solid waste as a source of raw materials, the report said, but will “phase out and completely halt such imports” by the end of 2019 “except for those containing resources that are not substitutable.”

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, the new chairman of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, told fair trade and health activists in Oregon that he's not comfortable advancing the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement the way it's written now. Blumenauer, D-Ore., held a town hall March 21, which was attended by members of Oregon Fair Trade Campaign, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, health care unions and other liberal groups, according to a blog post by the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign.

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security said the Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee (RPTAC) scheduled a partially open meeting April 2 in Washington. The public session will include an export enforcement update, regulations update, working group reports, an Automated Export System (AES) update, and presentations of papers or comments by the public. The open session will be accessible via teleconference to 20 participants on a first-come, first-served basis. To join via teleconference, submit inquiries by March 26 to Yvette Springer at Yvette.Springer@bis.doc.gov. A limited number of seats will also be available for the public session.