The Bureau of Industry and Security is seeking comments on an information collection related to declarations to the Chemical Weapons Convention. BIS said each CWC member must make “initial and annual declarations on certain facilities” that produce, import or export certain toxic chemicals and their precursors. Facilities subject to inspection by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons must also submit certain information. Comments are due May 6.
Deputy Treasury Secretary nominee Michael Faulkender said March 6 he wants to study whether changes should be made to the Biden administration’s October 2024 rule restricting outbound investment in China (see 2410280043).
President Donald Trump’s recently issued “America-first investment policy” memo suggests that the administration may focus potential trade negotiations with China around purchases of U.S. exports and tariff issues rather than national security issues, said Martin Chorzempa, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The Census Bureau is upgrading the severity of an Automated Export System alert that notifies export filers who don’t comply with a 2020 change that expanded the Foreign Trade Zone Identifier from seven to nine characters. The alert, Response Message 15A, is being upgraded from “Informational” to “Compliance Alert,” Census said in an email to industry this week. The upgrade will last for at least 120 days, the agency said, and will be upgraded to a severity of “Fatal” at a later date.
Canada this week sanctioned seven people and three entities connected to ongoing fighting in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. The designations target Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman al-Burhan, leader of the SAF, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, leader of the RSF, for their “refusal to negotiate in good faith and adhere to a permanent ceasefire,” Canada said. It also sanctioned various SAF and RSF officers along with Sudan Master Technology, a Sudanese company making weapons for SAF; Tradive General Trading L.L.C., an RSF front company; and Al Khaleej Bank, a financial institution with ties to the RSF.
The U.K. this week lifted sanctions on a range of entities that had ties to the overthrown Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria while keeping sanctions on people still connected to the regime or involved in illegal Syrian drug trade.
Although President Donald Trump has ordered his administration to reimpose maximum sanctions pressure against Iran, a State Department spokesperson on March 6 declined to say whether the U.S. plans to allow a waiver to expire this week that has authorized exports to Iraq of Iranian gas and electricity.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control on March 6 again extended a general license that continues to delay an exemption that would authorize certain transactions related to Petroleos de Venezuela, the country’s state-owned energy company. General License 5R, which replaced GL 5Q, now authorizes certain transactions with PdVSA involving an 8.5% bond on or after July 3. The previous license was set to allow those transactions to occur on or after March 7.
The Senate Banking Committee voted 13-11 along party lines March 6 to approve Washington trade lawyer Jeffrey Kessler to be undersecretary of commerce for industry and security, sending his nomination to the full Senate for its consideration.
Although the Bureau of Industry and Security recently resumed processing certain license applications that it had paused in early February as part of a broader export control policy review, the agency is still holding applications for a range of items destined to countries outside a group of about 40 U.S. allies and other trading partners, two people with knowledge of the holds said.