The many complicated “provisions” for implementing the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on free trade plausibly means July 1 is the “absolute earliest” date it can “enter into force,” Nicole Bivens Collinson, international trade expert with Sandler, Travis, told a Sports & Fitness Industry Association webinar Jan. 29. President Donald Trump signed USMCA’s enabling legislation into law on Jan. 29 (see 2001290035), saying the agreement “contains critical protections for intellectual property, including trade secrets, digital services and financial services.”
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.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Jan. 21-24 in case you missed them.
The U.S. effort to box out Huawei shows how complex and intertwined the issues are, the Asia Society Policy Institute president and a former deputy secretary of state said Jan. 28. Former Australia prime minister Kevin Rudd, now president of ASPI, said he's spoken with many people in the U.S. semiconductor industry, and they tell him that their ability to reinvest at the scale they need to remain dominant in the latest advances “hangs in part on their ability to export to China.” He asked, if the government bans those exports, will it “then step in to supplement on the order of tens of billions each year?”
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.
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.