Maros Sefcovic, EU commissioner for trade and economic security, said he’s confident the EU will be able to successfully defend its countervailing duties on electric vehicle exports from China after Tesla's Chinese subsidiary and BMW sued the bloc earlier this month (see 2501280015).
USDA is reminding traders that they have until Feb. 17 to complete questionnaires under China’s ongoing imported beef safeguard investigation, which launched in December (see 2412300027 and 2501020023). The USDA notice includes a translation of the Chinese investigation announcement, links to the three questionnaires and an unofficial translation of the questionnaire for beef exporters. “All U.S. beef exporters are encouraged to undertake their own review of the notice and deadlines,” the agency said.
Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, reintroduced a bill Jan. 29 that would require the president to identify and sanction those responsible for torture, abductions and other human rights abuses against Southern Mongolians in China. Merkley said the bill is intended to counter China’s efforts to erase Mongolian culture and language. The Southern Mongolian Human Rights Policy Act was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Merkley previously introduced the bill in November.
A bipartisan group of four House members introduced a resolution Jan. 28 calling for additional sanctions against Belarusian officials following that country’s recent “fraudulent” presidential election that extended the longtime rule of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
The Census Bureau is making permanent a “fillable” voluntary self-disclosure form that it launched as a pilot program in August, saying the form has allowed the agency to receive more “timely and complete” data and more efficiently process disclosures. The Census Trade Regulations Branch will officially begin implementing the disclosure form March 3, the agency said in a Jan. 30 email to industry.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network this week rescinded two alerts that warned banks about transactions that may have been funding “Israeli extremist settler violence” in violation of U.S. sanctions (see 2402010053). The alerts had asked banks and other financial institutions to submit suspicious activity reports to FinCEN if they believed a transaction may have been tied to West Bank violence. The move came days after the Office of Foreign Assets Control, under the direction of President Donald Trump, officially removed sanctions from all people and entities designated under a Biden-era sanctions authority that had targeted violent Israeli settlers and organizations in the region (see 2501240011).
Companies should consider carrying out extra due diligence when vetting customers that could have connections to address-only listings on the Entity List, a trade lawyer and former Bureau of Industry and Security official said.
European Parliament members this week probed the EU’s new trade commissioner about how he’s handling President Donald Trump’s tariff threats, with some members calling on the EU to prepare for retaliation.
The leaders of the House Select Committee on China urged the Trump administration Jan. 30 to tighten export controls on computing chips that could enable China’s development of artificial intelligence.
The EU is proposing new tariffs on certain imports of agricultural products and nitrogen-based fertilizers from Russia and Belarus, part of a push to reduce dependencies on products from the two countries. The potential tariffs would target the “15% of agricultural imports from Russia in 2023 that had not yet been subject to increased tariffs,” the European Commission said. “Once adopted by the European Parliament and the Council, all agricultural imports from Russia would be the subject of EU tariffs.”