China defended itself again this week against accusations from the EU, the U.S. and others that Beijing is withholding exports of critical minerals and other rare earths (see 2505300002), saying it has a right to impose export controls on those items.
The Supreme Court on June 5 said the Mexican government failed to "plausibly allege" that seven U.S. gun manufacturers "aided and abetted gun dealers' unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers." As a result, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) bars the lawsuit, a unanimous court held.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s foreign arms sales task force met with representatives of defense contractors Boeing, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin and RTX June 4 to get their ideas on improving the U.S. foreign arms sales process, the committee said June 5. The closed-door session was the task force’s third in a series of roundtables to receive defense industry input (see 2504300020).
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a bill June 5 that would require the executive branch to develop a strategy to counter deepening cooperation among U.S. "adversaries" in such areas as sanctions evasion and the sharing of restricted dual-use technology (see 2505290076).
President Donald Trump got the phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping he'd been seeking, and Trump wrote on social media that "there should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products."
Countries should “redouble” efforts to prevent sanctions violations involving North Korea, including “through enhanced screening and more stringent export control measures,” the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team said in a recent report. The MSMT, the group formed last year by the U.S. and 10 of its close allies to report on North Korea-related sanctions evasion (see 2502210005), also called for scrutiny of cargo ships that may be transferring petroleum to or on behalf of North Korea, adding that member states should share lists of any vessels suspected of delivering oil to North Korea. The 30-page report also includes details about arms transfers between North Korea and Russia.
Incoterms, the rules that define the responsibilities of sellers and buyers in shipping contracts, don’t relieve shippers from their sanctions compliance obligations or modify sanctions-related requirements “in any way,” the European Commission said in recent guidance.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned several people with ties to drug trafficking in Guyana, Colombia and Venezuela, including Mark Cromwell, Himnauth Sawh, Randolph Duncan, Paul Daby Jr., Yeison Andres Sanchez Vallejo and Manuel Salazar Gutierrez. OFAC said Guyana has been a transshipment point for drugs moving from South America to the U.S. and Europe for “decades,” including shipments of cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela and through the waters of Guyana and Suriname.
The U.S. this week sanctioned four International Criminal Court judges and issued several general licenses to authorize certain transactions with those judges or with the ICC that otherwise would be blocked by the Trump administration’s sanctions authorities against the judicial body (see 2502070022).
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed June 5 that the Commerce Department is reviewing a Biden administration interim final rule that increased restrictions on firearms exports.