Five Republican senators this month reintroduced a bill they say would expedite government approvals for natural gas exports. The Small Scale LNG Access Act would require the Energy Department to grant export approvals “without modification or delay” for liquefied natural gas exports equal to or less than 51.1 billion cubic feet per year, the senators said. It would also ensure the exports aren’t sent to “bad actors,” including regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said.
FTI Consulting hired Brian Papp, previously staff director on the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness, as a managing director in the government affairs practice, FTI said.
The Economic Community of West African States, responding to political upheavals in Mali and Guinea, said it will impose sanctions on Malian transition authorities, transition entities and the family members of those identified. The restrictive measures include a travel ban and asset freeze. ECOWAS also said that it will maintain sanctions on members of Guinea's National Committee of Reconciliation and Development -- which staged a coup earlier this year -- and their family members "until constitutional order is restored." The decisions follow the Nov. 7 ECOWAS summit on both countries' situations.
A Senate bill with bipartisan support would expand which deals involving sensitive personal U.S. data must be declared to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. The Protecting Sensitive Personal Data Act, introduced this month by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Raphael Warncok, D-Ga., would require mandatory declarations for investments that involve a range of personal data information, including genetic test results, health conditions, insurance applications, financial hardship data, security clearance information, geolocation data, private emails, data for generating government identification and credit report information. Warnock said “foreign entities” are investing in U.S. companies to “exploit” this data. “We need to strengthen CFIUS’s oversight authority of these transactions to protect Americans and mitigate this serious national security threat,” Rubbio said.
Several Republican senators last week introduced an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that would require mandatory sanctions against Nord Stream 2 AG, the company behind the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. The amendment, introduced by Jim Risch of Idaho, Rob Portman of Ohio, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas, would also require sanctions against “any entity responsible for planning, construction, or operation” of the pipeline, or their successor entity, as well as “any other corporate officer of or principal shareholder with a controlling interest” in those entities.
The U.S. and China joined the World Trade Organization initiative on trade and environmental sustainability, dubbed the Trade and Environmental Sustainability Structured Discussions, as co-sponsors, the WTO said. At the Nov. 4 WTO meeting, members welcomed the additions of the globe's two largest economies and also expressed their support for a draft ministerial statement that would set out goals for advancement in key areas such as trade and climate change.
The Israeli government designated six Palestinian civil society groups as terrorist organizations, the Ministry of Defense said. The six entities are the Union of Palestinian Women's Committees, the Al-Kamir Legal Institute, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Al-Haq, the Defense for Children International-Palestine and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. The groups were designated as terrorist organizations due to their alleged links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Defense Ministry said. It said the groups use their role in civil society to mask their ties to the PFLP.
The United Kingdom and Cote d'Ivoire held their first meeting under the U.K.-Cote d'Ivoire Economic Partnership Agreement Oct. 21, the U.K.'s Department for International Trade said in the Nov. 5 joint communique from the meeting. The parties agreed to adopt the Rules of Procedures of the EPA Committee, DIT said. They also discussed the EPA's dispute settlement framework as a means to "facilitate the implementation" of the agreement's "commercial and developmental objectives."
The United Nations Security Council’s sanctions committee adopted its updated guidelines, the UNSC said Nov. 5. The guidelines will help the council “facilitate the conduct of its own work” and provide “useful” guidance to member states on implementing UNSC resolutions.
The Commerce Department should tread carefully when imposing new export controls, foreign investment restrictions and limits on standards collaboration, which may jeopardize the U.S.’s position in global information and communications technology supply chains, U.S. companies and trade groups told the agency this month. Some of those regulatory restrictions are already having chilling effects on U.S. competitiveness, they said, as foreign firms and countries can quickly fill voids in overseas markets and leadership positions in global standards bodies.