The Australian Border Force and the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore successfully ran a blockchain trial to test the interoperability of two digital verification systems, the agencies said Aug. 18. The trial tested the ABF's Intergovernmental Ledger and IMDA's TradeTrust reference implementation and proved that trade documents can be issued and verified digitally across the two platforms, they said. The Australia-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement provided the mandate for the trial, which sought to make cross-border trade simpler between the two countries. The trial demonstrated the Australian system capability in issuing "high integrity digital trade documents" that can be instantly authenticated, provenance traced, and digitally processed, the agencies said. “QR-codes embedded with unique proofs are inserted into digital Certificates of Origin (COO), enabling immediate verification for authenticity and integrity of the document when scanned or machine-read,” they said.
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The Bureau of Industry and Security released a final rule to make technical corrections and clarifications (see 2108110010) to a 2020 rule that transferred export control jurisdiction over certain firearms from the State Department to the Commerce Department. The rule, released Aug. 18 and effective Sept. 20, introduced changes to make the requirements “easier to understand” and “interpreted consistently,” BIS said.
Mexico recently suspended certain trade relief measures originally introduced to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, KPMG said Aug. 16. They included measures to support the manufacturing industry, export services and rules for refunds of import taxes to exporters. During the suspension period, KPMG said “any days remaining will be considered to be ‘non-business days,’ so that any unexpired limitations period will be tolled and will not be triggered or to begin to run again until the first business day following the day the suspension ends, and at that time, the deadlines of any processes that have been paused will resume.” The suspension is in effect for 30 business days after Aug. 12.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. should review all U.S. investment transactions by Brazilian meatpacking conglomerate JBS S.A., its holding company J&F Investimentos and any entity owned by the company’s owners Wesley and Joesley Batista, two senators said. The companies use “criminal practices to obtain the funds to acquire U.S. companies,” which may jeopardize U.S. economic security and undermine U.S. efforts to combat corruption, Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in an Aug. 13 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. “With JBS S.A. planning further U.S. acquisitions in the near future,” the senators said, “the need for a thorough investigation is urgent.”
India is expected to soon allow up to 1.5 million metric tons of foreign-origin soybean meal at a 16.5% basic customs duty, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service said Aug. 13. But USDA said it is awaiting final approval from India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and said the lack of any official guidance is causing “high uncertainty on how this import quota will be implemented” through Oct. 31. Despite the uncertainty, USDA said Indian buyers are “starting to contract for soybean meal imports from neighboring Bangladesh, Vietnam, and for transshipments from the United States and other origins.”
Dutch customs recently announced it will increase monitoring of import declarations for certain sectors, including in the textile, biodiesel, e-commerce and e-bike industries, KPMG said Aug. 12. The Netherlands said it will specifically monitor the customs value and tariff classification for clothing imported from China, Vietnam, India and others; increase monitoring of the origin and tariff classification for biodiesel and used cooking oil from the U.S.; more “intensively” audit e-commerce consignments; and more closely scrutinize the origin and customs value of all imported e-bikes. Although the customs agency said it will target those import declarations, other imports may “also be subject to additional scrutiny,” KPMG said.
The Bureau of Industry and Security revoked export privileges for Matteo Taerri for violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, BIS said in an Aug. 10 order. Taerri was convicted June 4, 2020, after illegally trying to export a U.S.-origin Prostak filter module to Iran without the required license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Taerri was sentenced to time served, three years of supervised release and issued a $200 fine. BIS denied Taerri’s export privileges for 10 years from the date of conviction.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, is asking the Bureau of Industry and Security for information on Huawei export licenses. Wicker said BIS recently held an “informal briefing” with Wicker’s staff in which they withheld certain licensing information “based on confidentiality concerns,” but Wicker believes the information should have been provided. “The information requested neither focused on any particular company's compliance nor could have resulted in a breach of confidentiality for a company under investigation,” the senator said in an Aug. 11 letter to BIS.
More than a third of Republican senators are telling President Joe Biden that the European Union's plan to apply tariffs to aluminum, cement, fertilizers, iron and steel from countries that are not pricing carbon as the EU does is protectionism in disguise. They noted that U.S. steel is already more carbon efficient than the product is in the EU.
The Biden administration will maintain a Trump-era policy that loosened export restrictions on certain unmanned drones, a decision that drew applause from the aerospace defense industry last year but sparked concern from some lawmakers.