President Donald Trump described his phone call with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as "extremely productive," in a social media post, adding "we agree on many things, and will be meeting immediately after Canada’s upcoming Election to work on elements of Politics, Business, and all other factors, that will end up being great for both the United States of America and Canada. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
The State Department approved a possible $1.96 billion military sale to Qatar, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said this week. The sale includes eight "MQ-9B Remotely Piloted Aircraft" and related equipment. The principal contractors will be General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin, RTX Corp., L3Harris, Boeing and Leonardo SpA.
A federal government payment website, Pay.gov, will be offline March 29 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT for the release of a new version of the application, the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls said. "This outage will affect users paying their Registration fees during this window," it said.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has terminated the agency’s Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness along with 13 other advisory committees, the Commerce Department said on its website. Lutnick “determined that the purposes for which fourteen of the discretionary advisory committees were established have been fulfilled, and the committees have been terminated” effective Feb. 28.
Exporters who send their goods in ocean freight testified to an interagency panel that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's proposal to require a segment of exports to travel on U.S.-flagged, and eventually, U.S.-built ships (see 2502240058) will harm their business, or even make transport so expensive that they will be priced out of sales altogether.
The State Department approved a possible $100 million military sale to Saudi Arabia, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said last week. The sale includes "Advanced Precision Kill Weapon Systems" and related support. The principal contractor will be BAE Systems.
The Federal Maritime Commission is asking for public comments on an information collection related to ocean common carriers that are subject to the FMC’s regulations. The notice said these controlled carriers must ensure that they don’t maintain rates or charges in their tariffs and service contracts “that are below a level that is just and reasonable; nor establish, maintain, or enforce unjust or unreasonable classifications, rules, or regulations in those tariffs or service contracts that result or are likely to result in the carriage or handling of cargo at rates or charges that are below a just and reasonable level.” Public comments are due April 23.
The Federal Maritime Commission is warning government contractors about “fraudulent solicitations” sent via email from people pretending to be from the FMC. The commission urged companies to check emails for an address that ends in “@fmc.gov.” Emails that don’t end in “@fmc.gov” means “the address did not originate at the Federal Maritime Commission,” it said.
The State Department approved a possible $165 million military sale to Australia, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said this week. The sale includes "Countermeasures, Chaff, and Impulse Cartridges" and related equipment; principal contractors will be Kilgore Flares, Armtec Countermeasures, Alloy Surface and CCI Capco.
The Bureau of Industry and Security plans later this month to add 30 companies and remove 17 others from its boycott requester list, a list of entities that have asked other companies to boycott goods from certain countries in violation of the Export Administration Regulations (see 2412300003). The change will bring the total number of companies on the list to 165, a Commerce Department official said at the BIS annual update conference this week. The official said the list has “driven foreign parties to change their behavior by” convincing them to eliminate boycott language from their business documents.