A recently reached U.S.-Japan free trade deal makes up 90 percent of the losses farmers experienced because the U.S. dropped out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, during a Sept. 17 call with reporters. "I haven’t seen anything on paper, but according to [the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative], it puts us on this level playing field with our trading partners," he said.
Ian Cohen
Ian Cohen, Deputy Managing Editor, is a reporter with Export Compliance Daily and its sister publications International Trade Today and Trade Law Daily, where he covers export controls, sanctions and international trade issues. He previously worked as a local government reporter in South Florida. Ian graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Florida in 2017 and lives in Washington, D.C. He joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2019.
The International Chamber of Commerce is urging the World Trade Organization to permanently ban tariffs on “cross-border data flows” as a temporary ban moves closer to expiration, the ICC said in a Sept. 17 report.
The European Union Council on Sept. 16 updated and strengthened its export controls on arms sales and issued an updated guidance on the changes. The updates include a new “searchable online database” of member states’ arms export data, a renewed commitment to “promote the universalisation and effective implementation” of the Arms Trade Treaty and a push for “a broader range of information-sharing” on export controls.
A top Treasury Department official criticized Britain's decision to release an Iranian oil tanker and defended the U.S.’s maximum pressure sanctions campaign against Iran, saying the U.S. will not ease Iran sanctions ahead of a potential meeting between the two countries. Gibraltar's decision to release the Iranian oil tanker Adrian Darya 1, previously named Grace 1, was an “expensive mistake,” said Marshall Billingslea, Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing. Gibraltar seized the ship in July after suspecting it of transporting oil to Syria, but later released the tanker after Iran promised it would not ship oil to Syria, which would violate international sanctions. Despite the promises, the ship delivered oil to Syria (see 1909110042).
Chinese companies have begun asking about prices of U.S. agricultural goods in response to the U.S.’s two-week postponement of tariffs on Chinese goods, a China Ministry of Commerce spokesperson said.
The new 2020 incoterms include several significant changes that companies should update in their standard contracts, according to a Sept. 10 post from law firm Gowling WLG. The changes include revisions to incoterms related to deliveries of goods, commodity insurance, a clarification of costs between the buyer and seller, cargo transport security and more.
The trade staff of the House Ways and Means Committee told Democrats who are anxious for a ratification vote on the new NAFTA that the rewrite "will be ready for a vote as soon as it is ready; no sooner, and also no later," in a memo that was structured as an imagined dialogue between a member who wants a vote and the committee chairman, who has a big say on when that vote happens.
China released its first batch of tariff exemptions for U.S. goods, which include exemptions for 16 items, according to an unofficial translation of a Ministry of Finance press release. The goods will be excluded from China’s first round of retaliatory tariffs in response to U.S. Section 301 tariffs. The exemptions will take effect Sept. 17 and last until Sept. 16, 2020, China said, adding that it plans to publish more exemptions in “due course.”
A bipartisan group of senators is concerned that U.S. export controls are not strict enough to stop sensitive technologies from being sent to China and asked the administration to review the controls. In a Sept. 10 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, four senators suggested that China may be using Hong Kong to “steal or otherwise acquire” critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, mass surveillance tools and advanced robotics.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Sept. 10 that “strengthens and expands” the State and Treasury departments' sanctions authorities against terrorists, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a notice. Among several changes, the order allows the U.S. to impose “correspondent account or payable-through account sanctions” on foreign banks that “knowingly conducted or facilitated any significant transaction” for a U.S. sanctioned global terrorist, OFAC said.