The Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union reached a tentative agreement on a six-year contract, both unions announced June 14. This comes amid repeated slowdowns at several West Coast ports, including at Los Angeles and Long Beach, that the PMA said were directed by the ILWU (see 2306050077).
Although the Bureau of Industry and Security last month said it doesn’t have a draft rule in place to increase export licensing requirements for Huawei, exporters would be wise to still expect a tightening of restrictions against the Chinese telecommunications company, industry officials said this week. They also didn’t rule out BIS soon increasing export controls against China in other ways, including by potentially adding more items to the scope of its military end-use and end-user (MEU) rule requirements.
The U.K. Parliament’s Business and Trade Committee launched an inquiry into the country’s freeports and investment zones to study their impact on trade so far (see 2103250025). The committee is accepting “evidence submissions” on the topic until Sept. 8, asking for feedback on the “current status” of England’s freeports and investment zones, whether the “current governance structures for freeports” are “adequate,” whether the government is “providing the support required for freeports to become a success” and more.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen declined to say this week whether the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. would look into the Saudi-backed LIV Golf’s purchase of the PGA Tour despite several lawmakers urging CFIUS to review the deal. Yellen, speaking during a June 13 House Financial Services Committee hearing, said she couldn't comment on a potential review because there are “very strict rules of confidentiality,” but suggested the committee would review the acquisition if it implicated U.S. national security.
A bill that approves the Taiwan trade initiative, but says it cannot take effect until the administration submits an economic analysis of its effects and answers questions from Congress on implementation, passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee on a 42-0 vote.
The Treasury Department should sanction Russian state-owned nuclear company Rosatom, a “major source of funds” for Moscow and “one of the only largely unsanctioned Russian energy companies,” said Gregory Meeks, the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Democrat. Meeks, speaking during a June 13 House Financial Services Committee hearing, pointed to his bill introduced last month that would require the administration to designate Rosatom (see 2305120015).
Considerations surrounding the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. “should be baked into deal planning as early as possible,” especially as CFIUS scrutiny on Chinese investments is “not expected to ease any time soon,” Kilpatrick Townsend said in a June client alert. The firm said compliance officers whose company is pondering foreign investment from China need “to involve your regulatory teams as soon as possible” so the company can “identify the challenges likely to surface during the CFIUS process.”
House Democrats introduced a bill last week that they said will help facilitate the transfer of two Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the U.S. to Australia as part of the Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) partnership. The AUKUS Undersea Defense Act would also authorize “the training of Australian private sector defense personnel,” the lawmakers said.
Although the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade does not change tariffs, and therefore the administration says no legislative approval is needed, the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate committees that deal with trade have introduced a bill that would give it congressional approval.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week advanced a bipartisan bill that would require the administration to form a sanctions strategy that would be triggered if China invades Taiwan. The Taiwan Protection and National Resilience Act, reintroduced in March (see 2303300024), would require the several Cabinet agencies to submit a report to Congress describing a “comprehensive sanctions strategy” that the U.S and allies could adopt in response to an invasion. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., one of the authors of the bill, said Congress “must continue to closely monitor” China’s “hostile acts against our democratic ally and remain firm in our strategy to deter any aggression against Taiwan.”