The Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced legislation last week with an amendment that could expedite certain defense exports among the U.S., Australia and the U.K. The Department of State Authorization Act of 2023, approved by the committee July 13, now includes language that would authorize the transfer of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia and other measures to implement the Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) agreement, lawmakers said.
The U.S. may need to address export control loopholes to better prevent China and others from acquiring sensitive technologies, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said, but he also cautioned the U.S. against imposing controls that are too broad and said they need to be coordinated with allies.
Scott Boylan, a partner with consulting firm StoneTurn, spoke during a webinar July 12 on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (see 2307120029).
Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, subpoenaed the State Department for “key documents” relating to the agency’s reported “obstruction of the use of national security tools” against China, his office said in a July 12 press release. McCaul signed the subpoena about two months after he originally requested the documents from the State Department, citing news reports that the agency held back sanctions and export controls against China in an effort to limit damage to the U.S.-China relationship (see 2305240041).
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. is expected to increase the number of penalties it issues for violations of mitigation agreements, StoneTurn consultant Scott Boylan said. Orion Berg, a lawyer with White & Case, said there will be a similar uptick in activity from European countries, adding that he expects all EU member states to have an active foreign direct investment screening regime within two years.
The fourth "Fish Week" negotiations on fisheries subsidies opened at the World Trade Organization July 10 with the chair, Iceland's Einar Gunnarsson, fielding members' views on what parts from various proposals submitted by different countries would form the basis of the text-based talks in the fall, according to the WTO. Members are aiming to reach an agreement at the 13th Ministerial Conference set for February. The WTO will hold a July 19 meeting to discuss the "technical work related to the operation of the future Committee on Fisheries Subsidies," which will be established when the original fisheries deal, struck at MC12, comes into force. WTO Deputy Director-General Angela Ellard said "now is the right time to deepen the discussions and identify elements and approaches for the starting point of text-based negotiations in the fall."
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., decried what he called "fake trade deals that lack the force of law," at a field hearing in Kimball, Minn., the district of committee member Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R), and called on the Biden administration to negotiate lower barriers to U.S. beef, pork and poultry in the U.K., Taiwan and other countries in Asia.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. recently approved a merger between U.S.-based real estate business INDUS Realty Trust and global investment firms Centerbridge Partners and GIC Real Estate, INDUS said in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The companies said they received CFIUS approval June 22, and “all required regulatory approvals to complete the Merger have now been received.”
The European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee on July 6 adopted a draft law to address violating and circumventing EU sanctions. The law would impose a set of common definitions of sanctions breaches and set minimum penalties across the bloc, the parliament said. Violations would include not freezing funds or not respecting travel bans along with doing business with state-owned entities of nations subject to sanctions.
One of the leaders in the move to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act recently introduced a new bill that would require the administration to produce an annual report on foreign persons "found facilitating the exploitation of child labor" in the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and would instruct the administration to impose sanctions on those individuals.