Following the Chinese government's decision to place retaliatory sanctions on Canadian and British officials and entities for their criticism of the alleged human rights abuses in the country's Xinjiang region, lawyers in both countries are expressing concern over the rising tensions between the two sides and noticing greater business concern over maintaining Chinese market access. Neil Williams and Thomas Cattee, white collar crime lawyers at Gherson Solicitors in the United Kingdom, said the Chinese sanctions are merely symbolic without any real underlying economic effect but that sanctioned individuals in the U.K. have deferred to Chinese demands.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo suggested her agency has no plans to remove Huawei from the Entity List and said she will aggressively use trade tools to compete with China. But she also said she will prioritize efforts to invest in U.S. technology industries over imposing more export restrictions. “My broad view is what we do on offense is more important than what we do on defense,” Raimondo told reporters April 7. “To compete in the long run with China, we need to rebuild America in all of the ways we're talking about.”
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The Commerce Department should be careful not to place unilateral export restrictions on semiconductors and should invest heavily in domestic chip innovation, technology companies told the agency in comments due this week. But at least one think tank urged Commerce to pursue more strict controls and argued that decoupling from China along the semiconductor supply chain is inevitable.
The Bureau of Industry and Security's decision to eliminate reporting requirements for encryption items (see 2103260019) should substantially ease reporting burdens for certain companies, law firms said. Although the changes will affect a narrow set of exports, they’re expected to provide significant relief for companies that ship mass market encryption items or publish source code software online, the firms said.
As commercial ships worldwide continue to try to evade sanctions, U.S. authorities are increasingly monitoring industry compliance with maritime sanctions regulations, compliance experts said. The U.S. underscored maritime sanctions compliance last year after it issued guidance on common evasion practices, setting high expectations for industry compliance, the experts said.
The U.S. is ceding its strategic and trade advantages in the Indo-Pacific to China, which is expanding its influence through technology exports and outbound technology investments, the Center for a New American Security said in a March 31 report. The Joe Biden administration can reverse the trend through closer cooperation with allies in the region, including Japan and India, which have been willing to deny certain Chinese investments and object to coercion attempts, CNAS said.
The State Department will urge the Treasury Department to not renew a Belarus-related general license following the country’s disputed presidential elections last year and its violent crackdown on peaceful protester (see 2012230030), an agency spokesperson said. The general license, which has been renewed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control every year since 2015, authorizes certain transactions with nine Belarusian entities and is scheduled to expire April 26.
The State Department on March 31 issued its annual report to Congress certifying that Hong Kong doesn’t warrant differential treatment from mainland China under U.S. law. The report follows a determination last year by the Trump administration that Beijing’s so-called national security law was infringing upon Hong Kong’s autonomy, which led to a series of U.S.-imposed trade restrictions, sanctions and export controls (see 2005270026, 2012220053 and 2103170027). Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. will continue to work with Congress and allies “to stand with people in Hong Kong against [China’s] egregious policies and actions.”
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released the 2021 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, detailing foreign market access barriers faced by U.S. exporters. The 574-page report examines 65 U.S. trading partners and country groups, including any import policies, tariffs, customs, procedures and phytosanitary measures that are restricting U.S. goods.