The U.K. this week revised its Russia-related sanctions evasion guidance to update its list of countries and items that pose high risk of sanctions circumvention.
Canada last week objected to a report saying that the country is continuing to export weapons to Israel despite announcing restrictions on those shipments earlier this year.
A potential Chinese blockade of Taiwan could significantly affect trade routes to and from Asia, along with broader supply chains that depend on the region, said Eric Heginbotham, an international studies research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who's also on the committee, introduced a bill Aug. 1 that could lead to additional sanctions on China for providing dual-use items to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The U.K. this week said Mexico has agreed to remove a trade barrier on British pork and will begin approving shipments from 12 pork exporters across England and Northern Ireland, marking Britain's “successful bid to secure long-term access to this lucrative market.” The announcement follows eight years of negotiations between Mexican and U.K. authorities. The British businesses will now be able to export offal and edible by-products to Mexico, the U.K.’s Department for Business and Trade said. The U.K. also noted that the current 20% tariff on British pork will be eliminated once Mexico ratifies the U.K.’s accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (see 2312290034).
A State Department spokesperson this week declined to say whether the U.S. would consider reinstating sanctions against Israeli settlers who have committed violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. But, he said, the U.S. has spoken with the Israeli government about the recent uptick in violence.
President Donald Trump this week accused India of buying large amounts of Russian oil and selling it for profit, adding that he plans to significantly raise U.S. tariffs against the country.
The State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls recently posted the presentations and white papers from its last Defense Trade Advisory Group plenary in December. During the plenary, industry officials recommended that the agency scale down the International Traffic in Arms Regulations’ brokering reporting rules to reduce filing burdens for the defense industry (see 2412050023). Another presentation focused on issues surrounding controlled reexports and retransfers of legacy equipment; a third presentation focused on the barriers, inefficiencies and opportunities related to co-production, codevelopment, and co-sustainment of defense articles within U.S. international trade laws. DDTC also posted the minutes from the meeting along with other documents.
The U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York on July 30 permanently enjoined the U.S. from enforcing its International Criminal Court-related sanctions against two law professors. Judge Jesse Furman held that the sanctions impermissibly violate the professors' First Amendment free speech rights and that the law professors, Gabor Rona at the Cardozo School of Law and Lisa Davis at CUNY School of Law, likely will suffer irreparable harm without an injunction (Gabor Rona v. Trump, S.D.N.Y. # 25-03114).
The National Foreign Trade Council responded to the U.S. hikes in tariffs Aug. 1 (see 2507310081) by saying that agreements to remove some trade barriers are encouraging but "a great deal of work remains to be done to make sure they deliver on those promises and to accelerate efforts to remove discriminatory measures that were not part of those initial understandings.