Germany announced a collective export license for armaments from industrial cooperation recognized by France and Germany beginning April 1 under the Treaty of Aachen, Germany's foreign trade agency said in a March 31 notice. The export license marks the deepening integration of the German and French defense industries under the 2019 agreement as arms can now be exported between the countries with greater ease under specific provisions of the agreement.

Belgium extended its reduced value-added taxes on certain COVID-19 related goods and will reduce interest rates on late VATs and duty payments, KPMG said in a March 30 alert. The measures, announced by Belgium March 29, will maintain a reduced 6% VAT rate on the “intra-Community acquisition and import” of “mouth masks” and hydroalcoholic gels until June 30, KPMG said. The country will also temporarily reduce the interest rates for “negligent late payment” of VAT from 9.6% to 4% per year, which will apply to amounts payable April 1 through June 30. Other measures will reduce the threshold for VAT refunds and abolish a mandatory “advance deposit” for certain VAT return filings.

The European Commission imposed antidumping duties on aluminum extrusions from China with duty margins ranging from 21.2% to 32.1%, the commission announced in a March 30 news release. The antidumping investigation began Feb. 14, 2020, following a complaint filed by the association European Aluminium, which represented more than 25% of the European Union's total aluminum extrusion production capacity.

The United Kingdom and Thailand signed a memorandum of understanding that established a trade dialogue and committed to further market access negotiations, the U.K.'s Department for International Trade announced in a March 29 news release. The MOU created a Joint Economic and Trade Committee to address market access barriers in agriculture, food and drink, financial services, healthcare and tech as key U.K. issues and power-generating equipment and automobiles as the top Thai concerns. Both sides will work to alleviate mutual concerns over food and drink, fisheries and agricultural sector market access and financial markets access, the release said. “By 2030, 66% of the global middle class will be in Asia and today’s agreement sets out our commitment to deepen ties with some of the fastest-growing markets globally,” International Trade Secretary Liz Truss said.

Nearly a quarter of small businesses in the United Kingdom have decided to stop exporting to the European Union due to Brexit costs and new paperwork, according to a March 29 survey by the Federation of Small Businesses. And 4% of small exporters already have decided to permanently stop selling to the EU following the new trade rules that took effect on Jan. 1, when Britain left the EU, while 11% of small exporters are at least considering completely halting their exports to the bloc. Importers are a slightly different story, with only 17% temporarily suspending purchases from the EU. The Brexit transition has been a logistics fiasco, with 70% of importers and exporters reporting having suffered shipment delays when moving goods around the EU in the first quarter, and 32% having lost goods in transit. To ease these costs, one in 10 exporters is considering establishing a presence in an EU country to ease the process, and more than half of small exporters and importers have sought professional advice to navigate customs, rules of origin and value-added tax obligations.

A meningitis vaccine shipment is being held up by Italy's customs agency over suspicions that drugmakers are attempting to circumvent COVID-19 vaccine export controls in the European Union, two people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg reported. The shipment comes from GlaxoSmithKline Plc and is worth about $10 million. It has been sitting at Rome's airport for about a week awaiting testing to determine the true contents of the vaccines. The delayed shipment may turn out to be collateral damage from the EU's ramped up export control regime, which the bloc extended on March 24 due to concerns that vaccine commitments between developers and the government would not be met (see 2103240016).

China imposed sanctions on nine British nationals and four businesses that “maliciously spread lies and disinformation” about the serious human rights violations by China against the Uyghur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a March 26 news release. The sanctions, which take the form of an asset freeze and travel ban, come as a response to the United Kingdom's own sanctions against Chinese individuals or entities on March 23 that the kingdom coordinated with the European Union and the U.S. (see 2103220034). Five members of Parliament were included in the Chinese sanctions: Iain Duncan Smith, Tom Tugendhat, Neil O'Brien, Nusrat Ghani and Tim Loughton. The other four individuals are House of Lords members David Alton and Helena Kennedy, lawyer Geoffrey Nice and Joanne Nicola Smith Finley of New Castle University. The four entities are the China Research Group, Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, Uyghur Tribunal and Essex Court Chambers.

Digital services taxes and Boeing-Airbus disputes need to be cleared away, but in just a few months, another potential trade friction between the U.S. and the European Union may arise, according to a recent think tank study on the trans-Atlantic economic relationship. The Wilson Center said the European Commission intends to release a carbon border adjustment mechanism proposal this summer, so the U.S. and EU consultations have no time to waste. “Because the EU and the United States are each other’s largest commercial partners, driven by significant mutual investments forming dense interlinkages across both economies, it will be important for the parties to work together to devise WTO-compatible CBAMs,” the study said.

In a joint communication to the European Council on the state of European Union-Turkey relations, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell floated the possibility of expanding the sanctions framework on Turkey, additional sanctions listings and restrictions of the European Investment Bank, among other options to curb any Turkish breaches of international law. Other potential countermeasures against Turkey could involve targeting important sectors of the Turkish economy, including “a prohibition to supply of tourism services” and “import/export bans on certain goods and technologies” key to the energy sector. In the same communication, Borrell discussed expanding and modernizing the current EU-Turkey Customs Union as already proposed by the European Commission as a way to strengthen economic ties between the two sides.

British online fashion retailer Boohoo published a full list of its United Kingdom clothing manufacturers and suppliers, revealing it has cut ties with hundreds of companies following a review of its supply chain, according to a report in The Guardian. Reports of serious labor violations in its U.K. supply chain have dogged the company, leading to public scrutiny and even the initiation of a CBP investigation (see 2103030055). Boohoo had U.K. lawyer Alison Levitt conduct the review of the supply chain in 2020, ultimately leading to over 400 of the retailer's suppliers being cut from its production lines, the report said. Levitt's review found “endemic” problems at factories in Leicester, including minimum wage violations and life-threatening fire risks.