The Trump administration will likely continue to impose restrictions on transactions with large Chinese technology companies, particularly as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. places more scrutiny on Chinese investments involving personal data, trade lawyers said. Industry should prepare for more announcements similar to President Donald Trump’s executive orders on TikTok and WeChat (see 2008070024), one lawyer said.

The Bureau of Industry and Security released its long-awaited pre-rule for foundational technologies and asked industry to comment on the types of technologies BIS should target for potential controls. BIS is specifically looking for feedback on a definition for foundational technologies, criteria for identifying them, how the controls might impact their development and the potential benefits of end-use or end-user based controls as opposed to technology-based controls.

The Bureau of Industry and Security plans to add 60 entities to the Entity List, including 24 entities for helping the Chinese military build artificial islands in the South China Sea. BIS will also designate entities in France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates for a range of activities, including illegal exports to Iran, submitting false information to BIS, contributing to Russian biological weapons programs and more.

The European Commission is accepting feedback until Oct. 6 on a proposal to establish special value-added tax arrangements for Northern Ireland after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. The proposal is to maintain certain EU VAT rules for Northern Ireland (see 2008030013), which is part of the U.K., even after the rest of the territory reaches the Brexit deadline.

Brazil recently revoked its automatic and nonautomatic licensing requirements for 210 products with a total “import value” of about $5.6 billion (all dollar amounts in U.S. dollars), the Hong Kong Trade Development Council reported Aug. 24. The move is expected to save importers about $4.1 million in administrative fees, the HKTDC said, and will cut by about 267,000 the number of licenses issued by Brazil’s Secretariat of Foreign Trade. The measure is aimed at reducing government bureaucracy and “further improving the domestic business climate” surrounding trade, the report said.

China’s customs authority issued a list of more than 25 imports and exports subject to random inspections, an Aug. 21 notice said, according to an unofficial translation. The inspections will be carried out on a range of clothing, appliances and electronic products, including children’s clothing, scarves, toilets, dishwashers, monitors and microcomputers that are imported, and exports such as children’s bicycles and plush toys. The new inspections took effect Aug. 21.

The European Union will modernize trade agreements in the Pan-European-Mediterranean region to make rules of origin more flexible and “business friendly,” the European Commission said Aug. 24. The origin rules for certain products will be “easier to meet,” the EU said in a guidance, adding that the deal will now include higher thresholds for the use of non-originating goods and will lift prohibitions on duty-drawbacks. The changes will also ease logistics and customs procedures by allowing for electronic versions of “origin proofs.” The new measures will apply to trade deals with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Faroe Islands, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo.

More companies are seeking drawback payments as the economic slowdown has increased the importance of cash on hand, CBP officials and industry executives said during the American Association of Exporters and Importers virtual conference Aug. 20. “In general, I would say COVID's had a major impact on our businesses and it's also made our company even more focused on getting cash in the door,” said Kathleen Palma, senior executive for international trade compliance at GE. “One of the levers that our leadership has been looking at has been drawback.” At the same time, Palma expects that because the company is bringing in fewer shipments, that will be reflected in fewer drawback claims going forward.

Russia recently introduced a bill to revise regulations for its sanctions regimes and its countermeasures against U.S. sanctions, an Aug. 21 EU Sanctions blog post said. Among other changes, the bill would expand the scope of sanctions to apply to entities owned or controlled 25% or more by a sanctioned person or entity. The bill would also impose reporting requirements for financial institutions on measures they are taking to implement sanctions, and create a new penalty that would suspend or revoke a financial institution's license “in the event of repeated sanctions violations,” the post said.

TikTok, the video-sharing application owned by China-based ByteDance, sued the Trump administration for banning U.S. transactions with the company (see 2008070024), saying the administration’s decision was heavily politicized and lacked due process. TikTok also said it was the subject of a non-transparent review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., and called the administration’s ban a “misuse” of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.