China will require increased customs checks for containers, goods and other imports from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to limit the spread of a new Ebola outbreak, a June 10 notice said, according to an unofficial translation. China said it will impose health and quarantine checks for cars, containers, goods, luggage, mail, couriers and other items imported from the DRC, due to a new outbreak of the virus in Mbandaka. It also will apply increased restrictions on people entering China from the DRC. The measures will remain in place for six months, effective June 10, the notice said.
The Commerce Department is extending by 30 days, until July 6, the due date for comments on an information collection related to the five-year record retention requirement for export transactions and boycott actions, it said in a notice. Comments were previously due June 5 (see 2004030026).
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., named two labor activists to the Independent Mexico Labor Expert Board: Cathy Feingold, director of the AFL-CIO international department, and Fred Ross, founder of Neighbor to Neighbor, a grassroots labor rights advocacy group. The 12-member board, established under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, will monitor Mexico's implementation of its labor law revisions. The Senate and House majority and minority leaders will each appoint two members, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's Labor Advisory Committee will select four. Members serve six-year terms.
Sens. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., introduced legislation to sanction people or companies that “enable the significant and serial theft” of U.S. intellectual property. The bill would authorize blocking measures and asset freezes and allow the president to include an entity on the Commerce Department’s Denied Persons List. “This bipartisan legislation will help end foreign theft of innovative technologies invented in the United States and will send a strong signal to bad actors across the globe,” Van Hollen said in a June 11 statement. The U.S. should “stop leaving an open door for China and other adversaries to steal intellectual property and undercut our strength,” Sasse said.
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new reporting requirements for eight chemicals under significant new use rules. The proposed SNURs would require notification to EPA at least 90 days in advance of a new use by importers, manufacturers or processors. Importers of chemicals subject to these proposed SNURs would need to certify their compliance with the SNUR requirements should these proposed rules be finalized, EPA said. Exporters of these chemicals would become subject to export notification requirements. Comments on the proposed SNURs are due July 15.
The U.S. will continue to authorize sanctions against Belarus officials and others for undermining the country’s democratic processes, the White House said June 11. The authorization, introduced in 2006, will remain in effect for at least one more year beyond the expiration date of June 16, 2020. The sanctions block property and freeze assets of designated people or companies.
Sudan urged the U.N. Security Council to lift sanctions on the country, saying current sanctions are worsening the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, a June 9 news release said. At the very least, the U.N. should establish “clear, well-identified and measurable benchmarks” for lifting the sanctions, a Sudan representative said. U.N. officials said the country is still marred by violence and sanctions are justified. “It is not to punish Sudan, but to support and achieve sustainable peace,” the Sudan Sanctions Committee chair, Estonian ambassador to the U.N. Sven Jurgenson, said in a report to the Security Council.
The International Criminal Court criticized a U.S. executive order that authorized sanctions against the ICC (see 2006110028), calling the order an “unacceptable attempt to interfere with the rule of law” and saying it feels “profound regret” at the U.S.’s decision. “The ICC stands firmly by its staff and officials,” it said June 11, adding that the sanctions are aimed at “influencing the actions of ICC officials in the context of the Court's independent and objective investigations and impartial judicial proceedings.” President of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute O-Gon Kwon called the sanctions “unprecedented.”
Clete Willems, former White House deputy assistant to the president for international economics, believes the U.S. must convince allies to present a unified front to China on industrial subsidies, censorship and cybersecurity issues. Willems, who is now a lobbyist with Akin Gump, was speaking during a June 12 online program of the Asia Society. When it's just the U.S. arguing for reforms, he said, China can portray it as the U.S. trying to keep China down. But, he said, it might be possible to get China to change, “if we are able to portray them as an international outlier, which I think they are.”
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs began an interagency review for a final Commerce Department rule that will implement certain export control decisions from the 2019 Wassenaar Arrangement plenary. OIRA received the rule June 9. Commerce officials said in May the agency was preparing to issue several emerging technology controls (see 2005190052), including six controls agreed to at Wassenaar. OIRA is still reviewing a rule to implement export control decisions from the 2018 Wassenaar Arrangement plenary (see 2005210046).