Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Indian Affairs Committee Vice Chairman Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, pressed top Commerce Department officials late Thursday to explain why the Trump administration has frozen $980 million in unobligated Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) funding and halted an additional $294 million allocated in December 2024. Meanwhile, Senate Small Business Committee Chair Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, is circulating a draft bill, called the Recovering Excess Communications Appropriations While Protecting Telecommunications Upgrades, Reinvestment and Expansion (Recapture) Act, in a bid to claw back states’ non-deployment BEAD funding.
The U.K. this week launched a new landing page that collects sanctions enforcement information from across the country's various government agencies, including penalty notices, annual reviews, case studies and lessons for industry. The U.K. created the site after hearing from companies that "easily accessible and consolidated enforcement information helps industry learn from remedial action," the government said in a Nov. 3 email to industry.
Leaders of the House Select Committee on China and Foreign Affairs Committee are asking the Commerce Department to use the Office of Information and Communications Technology and Services to restrict products from Chinese companies (or subsidiaries) operating in the U.S. across a range of products.
The FCC shouldn’t grant SpaceX’s application to buy EchoStar’s spectrum licenses (see 2509080052) until SpaceX majority shareholder Elon Musk’s relationship with the Chinese Communist Party is investigated, said public interest group Frequency Forward in a petition to deny filed Thursday. “Musk and the companies he controls have extensive, ongoing business arrangements with China,” the petition said. “These business dealings give China the power to influence and control the operations of his companies, including Starlink.”
Mandi Rae Lumley, a member of the Yakama Native American tribe, filed suit against the imposition of tariffs against her, claiming any duties assessed against her violate the 1855 Yakama Treaty. Lumley, filing suit along with her company Tikkun Olam Holdings, said the Yakama Treaty lets members of the Yakama tribe "use any public highway to carry on free trade with any trading partner" (Mandi Rae Lumley v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, D.Or. # 3:25-02003).
The U.K. lifted its arms embargo on Armenia and Azerbaijan effective Oct. 13, the country's Export Control Joint Unit said Oct. 29. The embargo "covered weapons, ammunition and munitions that might be used on the land border between Armenia and Azerbaijan by military, police, security forces and related government entities of either state." All export and trade license applications for Armenia and Azerbaijan will continue to be assessed on a case-by-case basis against the U.K.'s Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, the U.K. said.
Mandi Rae Lumley, a member of the Yakama Native American tribe, filed suit against the imposition of tariffs against her, claiming any duties assessed against her violate the 1855 Yakama Treaty. Lumley, filing suit along with her company Tikkun Olam Holdings, said the Yakama Treaty lets members of the Yakama tribe "use any public highway to carry on free trade with any trading partner" (Mandi Rae Lumley v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, D.Or. # 3:25-02003).
As companies navigate the increasingly complex U.S. trade landscape, companies should "shift left" and adjust their trade compliance strategies so that potential compliance issues are caught upstream in areas such as sales, procurement and development before hitting the duty filing stage, a software developer said at the International Compliance Professionals Association conference in Grapevine, Texas, on Oct. 27.
Solar cell exporter Trina Solar (Vietnam) Science & Technology Co. said neither the Court of International Trade nor the Commerce Department addressed the exporter's claim that the nature of the production compelled a negative determination in the antidumping and countervailing duties anti-circumvention inquiry on solar cells from Vietnam. Filing comments on Commerce's remand results in a case on the circumvention proceedings, Trina Solar said the court can now address whether the significance of the statutory "nature and production process" factor "can be reconciled with" Commerce's affirmative circumvention finding "when the circumvention provisions were enacted to address 'screwdriver' operations" (Trina Solar (Vietnam) Science & Technology Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00228).
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of Oct. 13-19 and 20-26: