Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., June 4 urged Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to consider sanctioning Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich over his West Bank policies.
The House version of the FY 2025 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill could withhold funds the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network may need to implement or enforce its new beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting rule.
The House version of the FY 2025 State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Bill would prohibit the removal of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list, the House Appropriations Committee said June 3.
World Trade Organization members last week agreed on chairpersons for 13 of the body's subsidiary committees for 2024, the WTO announced:
U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns is scheduled to give the Senate Foreign Relations Committee an update on U.S.-China relations during a closed-door hearing June 4. Further information on the hearing’s focus wasn't disclosed. Committee Chairman Ben Cardin, D-Md., said in February that he was working to craft a “comprehensive” bill to address a wide range of concerns about China (see 2402010067).
TikTok last week denied a Reuters report that it's developing an operationally independent U.S. version of the social media application that Chinese parent company ByteDance could then sell to a non-Chinese owner.
All 12 Republicans on the House Select Committee on China, including Chairman John Moolenaar of Michigan, urged the Treasury Department May 31 to investigate whether six Chinese companies should be sanctioned for helping Iran’s military and energy sectors evade U.S. sanctions.
A new rule that would impose a three-day deadline for certain responses to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. was unanimously criticized by several law firms, an industry group and the Chinese government, which said such a time frame doesn’t take into account the complex, time-consuming discussions companies must have when dealing with CFIUS. Some commenters also asked the committee to nix a proposed change that would raise the maximum penalty for violations from $250,000 per violation to $5 million, saying most violations are accidental, and the increase could rattle the “confidence” of foreign investors.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., urged the Biden administration in a joint statement May 30 to sanction anyone involved in detaining, trying and torturing political prisoners in Venezuela, including judges, clerks, prison guards and interrogators. The senators said the Venezuelan government has increased its persecution of human rights and political activists in the run-up to the country’s July 28 presidential election.
The Biden administration doesn't support congressional calls to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) for threatening to issue arrest warrants against two senior Israeli officials, a White House official said May 28.