Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security added five Chinese entities to its Entity List, the latest escalation in the U.S. and China’s ongoing trade war. The move restricts the entities' ability to purchase certain U.S. products and will require licenses for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations with a review policy of presumption of denial. The entities are: Chengdu Haiguang Integrated Circuit, Chengdu Haiguang Microelectronics Technology, Higon, Sugon and Wuxi Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology. The Wuxi Jiangnan Institute is owned by owned by the Chinese government, Commerce said.
In the June 20 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
Senators on June 20 voted to block the sale of billions of dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates after weeks of criticism from bipartisan members of Congress. The sale, originally announced by the Trump administration on May 24, used an emergency provision in the Arms Export Control Act to allow the State Department to bypass congressional approval and certify 22 arms transfers to the Middle East. But Democratic and Republican members in both the House and Senate criticized the move, saying it was a misuse of executive power (see 1906120066).
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is updating its Reporting, Procedures and Penalties Regulations to change how parties file reports on blocked property, unblocked property and rejected transactions related to economic sanctions, OFAC said in a June 20 notice. The amended regulations, to be published in the June 21 Federal Register, also detail revisions to OFAC’s electronic license application procedures, the availability of its records under the Freedom of Information Act and other “certain technical and conforming changes,” OFAC said.
Vietnam is cracking down on transshipment schemes that falsely claim Vietnamese country of origin to avoid high tariffs on Chinese goods, according to a June 13 report in CustomsNews. Vietnam Customs has discovered dozens of certificate of origin violations so far, particularly in the textiles and apparel, seafood, agricultural, steel, aluminum and timber sectors, the report said.
Vietnam Customs recently issued a deployment plan for its commitments under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), according to a June 12 report on Vietnam Customs' CustomsNews website. Under the plan, Vietnam Customs will develop a circular guiding implementation of CPTPP provisions on inspection and determination of country of origin for imported and exported goods, and with the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade will develop a decree on verification of country of origin of imported goods, customs cooperation and preferential tariff rates, according to an unofficial translation of a Vietnam Customs press release. CPTPP entered into force Dec. 30, 2018, for the first six countries to ratify the agreement -- Canada, Australia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore – and entered into force Jan. 14, 2019, for Vietnam.
CBP is requesting comments by July 15 on an existing information collection for exports of self-propelled vehicles, it said in a notice. CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection without a change to the burden hours or information collected.
Adding in the unaffiliated African countries to the African Continental Free Trade Agreement remains an important step for the deal, said Giovanie Biha, the deputy executive secretary of the United Nation's Economic Commission for Africa in an ECA news release. “AfCFTA legally entered into force but for it to deliver its transformative economic potential, the signatory countries -- and the few countries that have not yet signed -- must rapidly join and ratify the Agreement to ensure that the continent moves forward together as one entity,” Biha said during a meeting of the African Ministers of Trade. Biha said "difficult decisions," including tariff offer scheduling and finalized rules of origin, still need to be made and "compromises sought, as we transform the AfCFTA legal text into an operable instrument." Albert Muchanga, commissioner for trade and industry of the African Union Commission, said "the AfCFTA is a continuation of a long journey that started with the establishment of Regional Economic Communities as building blocks of the African Economic Community. From here, Africa has to move to the next stages of customs union, common market, monetary union and eventually African Economic Community.” The African Ministers of Trade will next meet in July at the Niamey African Union Summit.
The government of Canada issued the following trade-related notices as of June 10 (note that some may also be given separate headlines):
In the June 7 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted: