Airbus agreed to pay more than $3.9 billion in combined penalties for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, the Justice Department said Jan. 31. The bribery charges, levied by U.S., French and United Kingdom authorities, stem from Airbus’s scheme to bribe non-governmental airline executives and government officials, including officials in China, to retain aircraft contracts.
The first humanitarian exports were sent through the joint mechanism created by the Treasury and State departments nearly three months after the channel was created (see 1910250057), Treasury said Jan. 30. Treasury said the mechanism successfully facilitated transactions from a “humanitarian channel” in Switzerland that sent cancer and transplant-related drugs to Iranian medical patients. The channel is subject to “strict due diligence measures,” Treasury said, adding that the successful transactions prove “a model for facilitating further humanitarian exports to Iran.”
The Commerce Department again postponed the first meeting of its Emerging Technology Technical Advisory Committee and may not reschedule it until March, a Commerce official said. The meeting, which was originally scheduled for Dec. 4, 2019,was initially postponed to January as the agency faced delays in issuing members their security clearances (see 1911200045). But the problem persisted, according to Anita Zinzuvadia, a licensing officer with the Bureau of Industry and Security, who said Commerce canceled the January meeting.
United Kingdom businesses and U.S. agricultural exporters want the two countries to sign a comprehensive trade deal rather than continue the Trump administration's recent string of limited phase one deals, industry representatives said. Some stakeholders feel the two countries should capitalize on negotiating a full agreement before the upcoming U.S. presidential election, which could lead to an anti-Brexit Democratic president and stymie negotiations, the representatives said.
More countries will try to operate separately from the U.S. financial system in an attempt to trade without fear of penalties from the U.S.’s wide-ranging sanctions regimes, sanctions experts said. Although some countries have struggled to operate outside the U.S. dollar -- such as Venezuela and Cuba -- better positioned countries may find success in the future, the experts said.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control reached a $1.125 million settlement with Eagle Shipping International for 36 violations of U.S. sanctions against Burma, OFAC said in a Jan. 27 notice. The ship management company, which has headquarters in Connecticut, illegally transported “sea sand” for Myawaddy Trading Limited, a company on OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals List, the notice said. Eagle Shipping allegedly provided transportation services from Burma to Singapore for a “land reclamation project” for Myawaddy that involved transactions worth about $1.8 million.
In a letter to the Defense Department, Sens. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said they are concerned about reports that the agency objected to a proposed rule from the Commerce Department that would have further restricted foreign sales to Huawei. The senators asked the Defense Department to provide information within 60 days about whether the agency objected to the rule, its rationale for doing so and how its objection impacts the agency’s “simultaneous attempts” to prevent allies to reject Huawei technology.
A group of 17 World Trade Organization members announced plans for an interim appeals process to settle disputes between members, according to a Jan. 24 joint statement. The members, including the European Union and China but not the U.S., said they will put in place “contingency measures” to allow for appeals of WTO panel reports “in disputes among ourselves.” The system would only be in place until a reformed WTO appellate body “becomes fully operational,” the statement said.
There will be more trade uncertainty in 2020 than in 2019 despite a phase one deal with China, trade experts said during a Jan. 22 panel hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As trade tensions with Europe come to the foreground and as the U.S. potentially negotiates a more comprehensive deal with Japan, one expert said, the administration will not have enough time and resources to start on phase two of the deal with China as it tries to implement the first phase. Another panelist said the U.S. and China will likely come to a “narrow” phase two deal as the election approaches, but that deal will not provide relief for the international trade environment.
The Commerce Department withdrew a proposed rule that would have further restricted foreign sales to Huawei that contain U.S.-origin goods, according to a Jan. 24 report in The Wall Street Journal. Commerce officials withdrew the rule from the Office of Management and Budget after objections from both the Defense and Treasury departments over concerns that the rule could hurt U.S. companies and U.S. national security interests, the report said. The Pentagon specifically voiced concerns that the rule could deprive U.S. companies of an important source of revenue they need for research and development to maintain a technological edge over China, the report said. The rule would have lowered the U.S.-origin threshold on exports to Huawei to 10 percent, but required the State, Commerce, Defense and Energy departments to approve with input from the Treasury, the report said.