An Australian man pleaded guilty after trying to help North Korea export weapons in violation of United Nations sanctions, Reuters reported Feb. 10. Chan Han Choi, a civil engineer born in South Korea, previously denied the charges but reversed course this week when he pleaded guilty to brokering a service for the sale of arms from Pyongyang and said he tried to export coal from North Korea to Indonesia, the report said. Choi’s sentencing in Australia is scheduled for March 19.
President Donald Trump didn't get China to agree to much in the way of structural changes, panelists said, but Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President Wendy Cutler said he put China front and center on the agenda, which was good. “He was really willing to take on the business community when it came to China,” she said. Cutler, who worked at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for more than 25 years, said that when she was at USTR, one of her frustrations in trying to negotiate with China was that U.S. “companies were pretty conflicted. They liked the … money they were making. They wanted us to be quote, unquote tough with China, but they didn’t want to be part of the get-tough strategy. Our hands were tied in a way.”
European Union Vice President Josep Borrell plans to place or review sanctions on Russian and Myanmar officials, he announced Feb. 9 during a European Parliament debate. Borrell, who visited Moscow last week, said sanctions could be included in a European response to the jailing of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who was sentenced to three and a half years in prison Feb. 2. In another Feb. 9 speech, Borrell laid out his plans to consider imposing additional targeted sanctions on individuals and businesses owned by the Myanmar military for their involvement in the Feb. 1 military coup. He also announced his intention to assess the use of the Everything But Arms trade preferences.
Kevin Wolf, a former Commerce Department official, said he has not been contacted by the Biden administration about heading the Bureau of Industry and Security, despite a Feb. 6 report in the Financial Times that said Wolf is viewed as a front-runner. “I have no information,” Wolf said Feb. 8. “I do not know who [Biden] will nominate.” Wolf served as Commerce’s assistant secretary for export administration under the Obama administration before joining Akin Gump as an export control and trade lawyer. The report said Biden has yet to name his choice for BIS undersecretary. The White House didn't comment.
The Treasury Department isn’t doing enough to limit the impacts of U.S. sanctions on humanitarian aid to Venezuela, the Government Accountability Office said in a report. Although Treasury has taken steps to mitigate the sanctions’ impact -- including through general licenses and by responding to individual questions about humanitarian aid -- GAO said the agency doesn’t “systematically track and analyze information from these inquiries” to spot trends or repeating issues. “Without collection and analysis of this information,” the GAO said Feb. 4, “Treasury and its interagency partners may be limited in their ability to develop further actions to ensure that U.S. sanctions do not disrupt humanitarian assistance.”
The U.S. will impose sanctions this week on foreign officials behind the military coup in Myanmar (see 2102020064), President Joe Biden told reporters Feb. 10. The measures will also include a set of “strong export controls” to impose “consequences” on the leaders of the coup, Biden said. “We’ll be ready to impose additional measures,” he said, “and we’ll continue to work with our international partners to urge other nations to join us in these efforts” (see 2102100012).
While the World Trade Organization faces multiple crises, including COVID-19 vaccine export control threats and massive trade wars, the institution's Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff delivered a 10-item agenda for moving forward. Speaking Feb. 9 at a Washington International Trade Association conference, Wolff said the WTO will be judged by “how well it deals with the crises of our time,” saying it must “demonstrate soon and visibly that it can deliver on subjects relevant to all those who engage in international trade or are affected by it ... pretty much everyone.”
Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., and 12 co-sponsors introduced a bipartisan bill that would require the administration to send Congress a report identifying any foreign person or agency that “knowingly assists, sponsors, or provides significant financial or material support for, or financial or other services to” Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The report should also identify senior members of those two groups. The bill would require a number of sanctions toward those people and groups, including no exports of controlled technologies, and says that the executive branch could block all financial transactions with the people and groups, if it chooses. The same language passed the House by voice vote in July 2019. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced a companion bill in the Senate during that Congress.
Ambassadors from the United Kingdom, Brazil, the European Union and Australia discussed on a Feb. 8 panel how to improve trading relationships with the U.S. and deal with the challenge China poses to the international trading system but had no insights into how to make breakthroughs on either.
After taking charge of its own financial sanctions regime after leaving the European Union, the United Kingdom will look to deepen engagement with the U.S., the EU and other close allies to bolster the effectiveness of its now-autonomous sanctions authorities. In a Feb. 4 blog post, the new head of the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, Giles Thomson, discussed how greater collaboration with key stakeholders in the public and private sectors will be key to ensure improved compliance. In the spirit of this renewed sense of public-private camaraderie, Thomson announced a targeted outreach on licensing in the spring to focus on the additions and applications OFSI is making.