Japan’s legislature will review the U.S.-Japan trade agreement today, Japan’s foreign minister told Nikkei, adding that Japan has “no objections” to the deal taking effect Jan. 1, 2020.

The FCPA Blog released its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement report for the third quarter of 2019, featuring seven enforcement penalties worth close to $78.5 million. The penalties include two civil settlements, two indictments, one prison sentence and another awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty, according to the report. There were also three corporate declinations from the Justice Department. The penalty total for 2019’s third quarter was less than for the third quarter in each of 2018 and 2017, which added up to $1.97 billion and about $1 billion, respectively.

Uncertainty over trade policy and African swine fever continue to overtake agricultural markets, causing “volatility across the industry,” CoBank said in its quarterly U.S. rural economic review, released this month. But there were two bright spots for U.S. exporters, CoBank said: the renewed Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products and the initial trade agreement between the U.S. and Japan, which will allow the U.S. ag industry to regain competitiveness in a “key export destination.”

U.S. sanctions on two large shipping companies last month disrupted the tanker market, forcing oil traders to cancel bookings and causing rates to spike as they searched for other ships, according to a September post from Clyde & Co.

Sanctions officials are sometimes unable to judge the effectiveness of the Trump administration's sanctions regimes, the Government Accountability Office said, pointing to the difficulty of tracing the effects of sanctions and the administration's constantly changing foreign policy goals. Officials said it is sometimes impossible to determine whether U.S. sanctions are the only or even the “most significant” reason for a foreign country changing its behavior, the report said. They also said U.S. policy goals can change while a sanctions regime is still active, “making it difficult to measure sanctions’ effectiveness in achieving any ultimate policy objective.”

Many things about the U.S.-China trade war have not turned out as experts expected, panelists said at the Washington International Trade Association Oct. 2. Chad Bown, a trade economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former White House economist, said that 18 months ago, people would have not expected there to be 15 percent to 30 percent tariffs on more than half of Chinese imports, with nearly all the rest slated for tariffs by December, and yet, the economy is doing OK. "Markets haven't panicked," he said. But Bown said he's not that surprised that the country hasn't seen a massive effect from the trade war, since the tariffs in place the longest were on inputs, and because, compared to the size of the entire economy, "we don't actually trade all that much."

In the Oct. 2 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:

The European Union announced the start of negotiations with five African nations, known as the Eastern and Southern Africa, or ESA, partners, to expand on an existing Economic Partnership Agreement, the European Commission said in an Oct. 2 press release. The EU wants to broaden the initial deal, signed in 2009 and provisionally applied since 2012, to create a comprehensive trade agreement with Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Zimbabwe, the press release said. The new deal should cover technical barriers to trade and intellectual property rights, the EU said. In a statement, Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said the EU is “fully behind this important endeavour,” which will “boost bilateral trade and investment flows and will contribute to the creation of jobs and further economic growth in our respective regions.”

The government of Canada issued the following trade-related notices as of Oct. 2 (note that some may also be given separate headlines):

The Mexican Secretariat of Economy on Sept. 27 published a notice listing the names and tax numbers of maquiladoras that are being terminated from the Industria Manufacturera, Maquiladora y de Servicios de Exportacion (IMMEX) program for non-compliance with reporting requirements. The list of about 170 companies includes those that failed to submit required annual reports, or submitted reports that did not comply with Mexican regulations.