The United States and Mexico today announced Wednesday 4 October resolution to the situation at a Grupo Yazaki auto components facility in León, Mexico. United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai had requested the Government of Mexico to review the matter under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s (USMCA) Rapid Response Labor Mechanism (RRM). The Government of Mexico declined the request but "worked with the facility to ensure no ongoing denial of rights was taking place."
Rep. Andy Barr’s (R-KY) bipartisan legislation, the Chinese Military and Surveillance Company Sanctions Act of 2023, [HR760] passed unanimously out of the House Financial Services Committee and and will be brought up by the House should it ever return to regular order.
Responding to the failure of the Commerce Department's October 7, 2022 rules to halt innovation at China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation Incorporated (SMIC), House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) have called on the adminstration to "rectify the failures by the Department of Commerce to enforce export controls on advanced semiconductors."
the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added 49 entities to the Entity List for providing support to Russia’s military and/or defense industrial base. Forty-two …
Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Chair of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party kept the business of his committee humming last month, despite the rest of the Chamber being run into in the ditch. The twice-deployed Marine, Princetonian and Georgetown PhD has maintained a steady drumbeat of hearings and press events scolding US firms for doing business with the Chinese and lambasting the administration for not sharing his vitriol. Year to date, the committee's efforts have been strictly performative, calling for the production of reams of information on a broad array of topics. Analysis and informed policy reccomendations may follow.
Newly installed FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki outlined her group's agenda including a whistleblower rewards program, rules targeting real estate and investment advisors, drug trafficking and the rollout of beneficial ownership information reporting requirements of the Corporate Transparency Act In a presentation to the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists October 3. Ms. Gacki walked attendees through her objectives since being named to head FinCEN in July. Prevoiusly she served as chief of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced a "Department-wide Safe Harbor Policy" for voluntary self-disclosures of misconduct by acquirers in the mergers and acquisition process.
A California Telecoms consultant pleaded guilty to exceeding the scope of OFAC approval for advising Iranian telecommunications providers by providing unlicensed software. According to court documents, Farhad Nafeiy obtained licenses – or approvals – from OFAC for advising non-Iranian telecommunications companies on doing business with Iran. However, those licenses did not authorize Nafeiy to provide any hardware, software or technology directly to Iran. Nafeiy exceeded his OFAC licenses, thereby violating the ITSR and IEEPA, by directly providing software upgrades to telecommunications equipment in Iran.
Not to be outdone by Chairman Mike Gallagher of the Congressional Select Committee on the CCP, the Chairs of the bipartisan and bicameral Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Tuesday released two letters to the Players and Owners of the National Basketball Association, calling for diligence to ensure NBA merchandise is not tainted by slavery. The Chairs expressed disappointment with the organizations' earlier responses and urge a more “fulsome response” this time.
This Sunday, 1 October, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) began its transitional phase. In its transitional phase, CBAM will only apply to imports of cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen. EU importers of those goods will have to report on the volume of their imports and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions embedded during their production, but without paying any financial adjustment at this stage.
October 3, BIS announced four denials of export privileges for parties convicted of unauthorized exports of firearms or ammunition.
Stanford University has agreed to pay $1.9 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by submitting proposals for federal research grants that failed to disclose current and pending support that 12 Stanford faculty members were receiving from foreign sources. The settlement relates to research grants that Stanford received between 2015 and 2020 from five federal agencies: the Departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has published new best practice guidance for industry to help prevent items that are considered the most significant to Russian weaponry requirements from being diverted for use in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The. Septermber 28 guidance recommends that exporters and reexporters of these highest priority items seek written assurances of compliance from their customers to help prevent diversion.
United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced today that the United States has asked Mexico to review whether workers at the Teklas Automotive facility in Aguascalientes, which manufactures automotive parts, are being denied the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining.
The United States is apparently going to work closely with China on Washington’s proposal to enhance transparency at the World Trade Organization, as some members seemed indifferent or somewhat opposed to the US proposal to improve transparency with some naming-and-shaming provisions, our correspondent has learned. During the group meetings to discuss industrial policies, industrialization and policy space at the just-concluded retreat on Tuesday, Washington and Beijing – which were placed in the same group – discussed how to extend special and differential treatment while adhering to transparency provisions.
Child Labor Report Issued The Labor Department released its annual report on the worst forms of child labor, spotlighting child labor abuses globally and reviewing progress made by some …
Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two commercial entities related to the conflict in Sudan, as well as five entities and two individuals involved in the procurement of sensitive parts for Iran’s one-way attack unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program. Elsewhere, OFAC sanctioned several Sinaloa Cartel affiliates and fugitives affiliated with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. Responsible for a significant portion of the illicit fentanyl and other deadly drugs trafficked into the United States, the Sinaloa Cartel is one of the world’s most damaging transnational criminal organizations. Additionally, OFAC sanctioned the leader of the Clan del Golfo, one of Colombia’s largest criminal enterprises that controls most of the country’s cocaine cultivation, production, and transportation routes.
The U.S. is poised to indefinitely lift export restrictions on exports of semiconductor equipment to Samsung Electronics and SK hynix's China facilities. Business Korea reports the. …
An Addendum to the 2021 Updated Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory calls attention to the China’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and the evidence of widespread use of forced labor there. The addendum urges businesses and individuals to continue to undertake appropriate human rights due diligence measures to identify potential supply chain links to entities operating in Xinjiang, entities linked to Xinjiang (e.g., through the pairing program, Xinjiang supply chain inputs, or the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC)), entities included in the UFLPA Entity List, or entities using the labor of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, or members of other persecuted groups from Xinjiang.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the addition of three Chinese manufacturers to the Uyghur Forced Labor blacklist which, if enforced, could greatly impact the US vinyl flooring industry. China accounts for 63% of all vinyl floor tiling shipped to the United States in the last two years, and Vietnam comes in second at 20%. Materially all of the PVC in these shipments is sourced from the Uyghur region, including transshipments through Vietnam.