The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control made changes to one of its sanctions lists, replacing the List of Foreign Financial Institutions Subject to Part 561 with the List of Foreign Financial Institutions Subject to Correspondent Account or Payable-Through Account (CAPTA) Sanctions, OFAC said in a March 14 notice. The new list contains foreign entities “for which the opening or maintaining of a correspondent account or a payable-through account” in the U.S. is restricted, OFAC said. Foreign entities on the list are subject to the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014, the North Korea Sanctions Regulations, the Iranian Financial Sanctions Regulations and the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act of 2015. OFAC also amended the Iran and Hizballah financial sanctions regulations to include references to CAPTA, the agency said.

The United Kingdom Parliament voted on March 14 to seek a delay of the U.K.’s withdrawal from the European Union. The EU still has to approve the extension of Article 50, and the time frame of the departure is still to be determined, though it may be lengthy if the U.K. does not adopt the deal it negotiated with the EU, as appears likely after it failed twice in the U.K. Parliament in recent months.

The Mexican government is considering adding new products to a list of U.S. goods that face higher tariffs in response to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum. During a March 6 meeting "of the Foreign Trade Commission of the Mexican Senate, Luz Maria de la Mora-Sanchez, Foreign Trade Undersecretary of Mexico’s Ministry of Economy, announced that the Mexican government is planning to include additional items on its list of U.S. products subject to retaliatory measures," law firm Thompson Hine said in a blog post. The additional goods may be finalized by April, Thompson Hine said.

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

In the March 13 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:

Recent editions of Mexico's Diario Oficial list trade-related notices as follows:

The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices for March 13 (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 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. Import requirements will apply to the following regulated energy-using products: battery chargers; commercial pre-rinse spray valves; metal halide lamp ballasts; microwave-ovens; small electric motors; walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers; whole-home dehumidifiers. The list of codes includes "effective dates and expiry dates for each of the affected HS codes."

Pakistan is changing regulations surrounding food labels, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a March 7 report. The regulatory order, which was issued by Pakistan’s Ministry of Commerce and took effect Feb. 19, requires label information to include “a minimum 66% shelf life at the time of clearance of goods” and “labeling of nutritional values and usage instructions in Urdu and English,” according to the report. The new regulations also requires “the Halal Certificate issuing authority to be a member of either IHAF [International Halal Accreditation Forum] or SMIIC [Standards and Metrology Institute for the Islamic Countries].”

Japan revised its beef and pork safeguards to reflect the recent trade agreement signed between Japan and the European Union, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a March 8 report. The Japan-EU agreement, which took effect Feb. 1, revises Japanese safeguards on volumes of beef and pork imports for all EU countries, the report said. “The revision removes EU imports from the trigger conditions which count imports only from countries with which Japan does not have a free trade agreement,” according to the report. Japan made a similar revision to its safeguards as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership entered into force on Dec. 30, 2018.