Treasury’s Office of Foreign assets Control sanctioned 16 people and entities, including Syrian oligarch Samer Foz, to cut off “critical supplies and financiers” for Syria's “luxury reconstruction and investment efforts," Treasury said in a June 11 press release. Treasury said Foz has “been profiting heavily front reconstruction efforts” in Syria by building luxury developments on land seized by Syria.
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 U.S. should impose harsher sanctions on the Nicaraguan government, the Daniel Ortega regime and the country’s business leaders or risk the country devolving into a similar situation the U.S. faces with Venezuela, panelists told the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security and Trade on June 11.
China is looking into additional measures to protect its technology firms and strengthen controls on exports through a “national technological security management list system,” according to state news agencies.
House members and experts made the case for a quick and long-term reauthorization for the Export-Import Bank of the United States during a June 4 House Financial Services Committee hearing, saying the move could significantly benefit U.S. exporters and help counter China’s export credit agencies and state subsidies. The hearing came about a month after the Senate voted to confirm three appointees to the bank’s board of directors, giving the bank enough directors for a quorum to approve transactions of more than $10 million (see 1905080073).
Panelists warned against increasingly strict export controls and criticized the Trump administration's handling of the Huawei blacklisting during a June 4 Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs hearing on “Confronting Threats From China: Assessing Controls on Technology and Investment, and Measures to Combat Opioid Trafficking.” The U.S. is drawing dangerously close to shrinking markets for U.S. semiconductor exporters, the panelists said, a move that could prove devastating for the industry. They also suggested the Trump administration’s restrictions on Huawei are too broad and have hurt U.S. exporters as well as damaged trade talks between the two sides.
Thailand’s recently passed Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Items Act will take effect Jan. 1, 2020, according to a June 4 notice from Baker McKenzie, regulating all goods related to the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Products include “armaments,” dual-use items and “tangible and intangible items that could have commercial interest, technology or even software,” the notice said. The act would control exports, re-exports, transshipments, transits, brokering and other actions related to the weapons.
The Commerce Department plans to issue an advance notice of proposed rulemaking for export controls of foundational technologies in the coming weeks, Commerce officials said. The notice will be published “quite soon” and in “weeks, not months,” said Rich Ashooh, Commerce's assistant secretary for export administration, speaking at a June 4 Bureau of Industry and Security Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting. Hillary Hess, director of Commerce’s regulatory policy division, was more reserved in her prediction, saying she is unsure exactly when the notice will be released but assuring the committee it is the next export-related notice that BIS plans to publish. “It is in the process now,” Hess said at the meeting. “We’re trying to prepare it.”
China opened an investigation into FedEx after it said the shipping company “failed to deliver” packages to certain addresses in China, state-media reported June 1. China suspects FedEx of “undermining the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese clients,” the report said, damaging the rights and interests of FedEx’s clients and violating industry laws.
China is investigating complaints from U.S. exporters about Chinese customs clearances, including accusations of slower processing, increased inspections and inexplicable delays in licensing approval, China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said during a June 2 press conference. Wang said he did not know if the complaints were about “a real or specific situation,” according to an unofficial translation of his comments, but some U.S. exporters allege the moves are another step in China’s 2018 threat to take retaliatory measures against the U.S. that extend beyond tariff hikes (see 1905290041).
China is finding ways other than tariff increases to retaliate against U.S. exporters, further damaging the U.S.’s struggling agricultural export sector, panelists said during a Washington International Trade Association discussion on U.S.-China trade. The expected retaliation from China -- along with stalled trade negotiations and the increased difficulty of accessing China’s markets -- could lead to crippling, long-term consequences for some U.S. exporters, the panelists said.