World Trade Organization members held a second round of "consultations" Feb. 8-10 to discuss progress in implementing the work program of the 12th Ministerial Conference Sanitary and Phytosanitary Declaration, the WTO said. The members reaffirmed their commitment to boosting cooperation on addressing the challenges affecting food safety and animal and plant health while also promoting a more effective application of the deal.
Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., plan to reintroduce a bill that would require the administration to produce an annual report on the relationship between criminal gangs and elites in Haiti and impose “robust” Magnitsky human rights sanctions on people identified in the report. The Haiti Criminal Collusion Transparency Act previously was introduced in October (see 2210190015).
The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee said renewing the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill didn't happen last year because Democrats pushed "social policy and environmental policy in MTB and GSP."
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
New U.S. export restrictions on six Chinese cities with ties to China’s balloon surveillance program is a “step in the right direction,” but it should have come much sooner, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said. “It shouldn’t have taken a flagrant violation of American territorial sovereignty for BIS to take these measures to prevent [the Chinese Communist Party] from using U.S. technology to compromise our national security,” McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said last week in a news release.
The U.K. and New Zealand have met certain investment screening requirements and will remain eligible for the Treasury Department’s excepted foreign state and excepted real estate foreign state provisions, the agency said last week. The determination adds both countries to the list of foreign nations that benefit from certain exemptions under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. review process.
The Biden administration should take “immediate action” through an executive order to screen U.S. outbound investments in China, Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in a commentary published this week in The Washington Times. Although the two lawmakers championed the National Critical Capabilities Defense Act, which would create a Committee on National Critical Capabilities to review those investments, they said the administration can move more quickly.
Senators are working closely with the Biden administration, and believe they have its support, on a bill that could strengthen the ability of the U.S. to respond to economic coercion by foreign countries (see 2302080068). The bill, reintroduced this week by Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Chris Coons, D-Del., could allow the president to lower duties on non-import-sensitive goods made by a country that lost exports due to coercive actions; increase duties on imports from the "foreign adversary" committing the coercion; and allow the U.S. to more easily facilitate trade with the coerced parties.
Last year was a “historically busy” period for new trade controls, and that pace “shows few signs of slowing” this year, Gibson Dunn said in a 2022 export control and sanctions recap released this week. The recap provides an overview of last year’s raft of new sanctions and export controls against Russia, China, Iran and others; the Bureau of Industry and Security’s new administrative enforcement policies (see 2206300069 and 2205230018); the State Department’s new compliance program guidelines (see 2212060015 and 2212210049); Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. actions; trade restrictions imposed by the EU and U.K.; and more.
The U.S. is making “good progress” on aligning export controls over sensitive technologies with allies, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said this week, adding that almost all the administration's recent discussions with trading partners have involved China technology issues. She also said the agency is working to counter a growing oil partnership between China and Iran, but said preventing China’s purchases has proven challenging.