The Biden Administration last week substantially modified restrictions on U.S. person investments in certain Chinese companies, focusing those new restrictions particularly on entities with ties to the Chinese defense or...more
6/11/2021
/ Biden Administration ,
China ,
Department of Defense (DOD) ,
Executive Orders ,
Military End Use ,
NDAA ,
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
SDN List ,
Surveillance ,
Technology Sector ,
Trump Administration
On April 8, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) added seven Chinese supercomputer firms and organizations to its Entity List, the agency’s principal export sanctions list. BIS alleges...more
4/26/2021
/ Biden Administration ,
Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) ,
China ,
Customs and Border Protection ,
Entity List ,
Export Administration Regulations (EAR) ,
Exports ,
Forced Labor ,
Huawei ,
Human Rights ,
Imports ,
National Security ,
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) ,
Supply Chain ,
Technology Sector ,
U.S. Commerce Department ,
ZTE
On January 19, 2021, one day before the transition to the new Biden Administration, the U.S. Department of Commerce published its interim final regulations (“Regulations”) that will allow the United States to review, block,...more
3/26/2021
/ Biden Administration ,
CFIUS ,
China ,
Electronic Communications ,
Foreign Investment ,
Information Technology ,
Interim Final Rules (IFR) ,
Licensing Rules ,
Prohibited Transactions ,
Technology ,
U.S. Commerce Department
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last week ruled that certain securities trading restrictions will be prevented from going into effect with respect to Xiaomi Corporation (“Xiaomi”) under Section 1237 of...more
On January 13, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) issued a new Withhold Release Order (“WRO”) under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 on all cotton products and tomato products from the entire Xinjiang region of...more
Rounding out an already-intense 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) issued three notices in December that expanded export sanctions and restrictions against Chinese, Russian, and...more
1/14/2021
/ Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) ,
China ,
Commerce Control List ,
Economic Sanctions ,
Export Administration Regulations (EAR) ,
Export Controls ,
Exports ,
Hong Kong ,
Licensing Rules ,
Military End Use ,
Popular ,
Russia ,
U.S. Commerce Department ,
Venezuela
With only two weeks left in its term in office, the Trump Administration issued yet another 11th hour Executive Order (“EO”) on January 5 that purports to create a new legal framework to ban transactions with certain Chinese...more
On December 2, 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) issued a Withhold Release Order (“WRO”) against cotton products made by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (“XPCC”) or any of its affiliates...more
On November 12, 2020, President Trump issued Executive Order 139591 (“the Order”) that will shortly bar any U.S. person from “any transaction in publicly traded securities, or any securities that are derivative of, or are...more
11/20/2020
/ China ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Defense Sector ,
Department of Defense (DOD) ,
Divestment ,
Entity List ,
Executive Orders ,
Foreign Investment ,
International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) ,
National Security ,
NDAA ,
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
Trump Administration ,
US Trade Policies
On September 14, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) expanded a ban on certain imports from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (“Xinjiang”) in the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) while saying that it was still...more
An importer recently agreed to pay $5.2 million to settle a False Claims Act (“FCA”) case alleging evasion of antidumping duties (“AD”) on wooden bedroom furniture from China. The importer, Blue Furniture Solutions, LLC (now...more
After months of anticipation, President Donald Trump signed an interim “Phase One” trade agreement (“the Agreement”) with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He at the White House on January 15, 2020. Under the Agreement reached after...more
1/23/2020
/ Agricultural Sector ,
China ,
Currency Manipulation ,
Dispute Resolution ,
Energy Sector ,
Exchange Rates ,
Financial Services Industry ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Manufacturers ,
Section 301 ,
Tariffs ,
Trade Agreements ,
Trade Negotiations ,
Trump Administration ,
USTR ,
WTO
December 2019 has yielded some potentially significant relief to U.S. businesses and agricultural producers that may improve the terms of trade in 2020 after a prolonged period of increasing and damaging friction in...more
12/27/2019
/ Agricultural Sector ,
Canada ,
CFIUS ,
China ,
Export Controls ,
FCC ,
Imports ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Mexico ,
NAFTA ,
Tariffs ,
Trade Relations ,
Trade Wars ,
Trans-Pacific Partnership ,
Trump Administration ,
United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) ,
US Trade Policies ,
USTR
On August 13, 2019, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced a phased imposition of a new Section 301 10% tariff on roughly $300 billion in annual imports from China that were not covered in three previous...more
The Administration has been fully occupied this summer in its ongoing disputes with America’s major trading partners. The U.S. Government is at least nominally resuming high level trade negotiations with China after months...more
7/26/2019
/ Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) ,
Canada ,
China ,
EU ,
Export Administration Regulations (EAR) ,
Export Bans ,
Export Controls ,
France ,
Imports ,
Indictments ,
Mexico ,
NAFTA ,
Section 301 ,
Tariffs ,
Trade Relations ,
Trump Administration ,
UK Brexit ,
United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) ,
US Trade Policies ,
USTR ,
WTO
In an Executive Order (EO) issued on Wednesday, President Trump gave exceedingly broad authority to the U.S. Department of Commerce to block transactions of information and communications products and services if the...more
5/17/2019
/ 5G Network ,
Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) ,
China ,
Digital Communications ,
Economic Sanctions ,
Export Administration Regulations (EAR) ,
Information Technology ,
National Security ,
Retaliatory Tariffs ,
Tariffs ,
Telecommunications ,
Trump Administration ,
U.S. Commerce Department
On May 13, 2019, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (“USTR”) publicly released a notice of the Trump Administration’s intention to subject another US$300 billion in annual U.S. imports of Chinese-origin...more
5/16/2019
/ China ,
Exclusions ,
Exports ,
Imports ,
Notice and Comment ,
Retaliatory Tariffs ,
Section 301 ,
Tariffs ,
Trade Relations ,
Trump Administration ,
US Trade Policies ,
USTR
On Friday, May 10, 2019, the Trump Administration increased the tariff rate on US$200 billion worth of annual U.S. imports of Chinese-origin products from the current rate of 10% to 25%. That sharp hike in U.S. tariffs...more
According to the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed over the weekend that neither the United States nor China would increase tariffs over the next 90 days, pending further...more
Since July 2018, the Trump Administration has imposed two sets of tariffs on goods made in China under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (“Section 301”) (19 U.S.C. § 2411) that cover an estimated $50 billion in imports...more
After months of deliberation, Congress has passed the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 (“FIRRMA”) as Title XVII in the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (“2019...more
8/15/2018
/ CFIUS ,
China ,
Covered Transactions ,
Critical Infrastructure Sectors ,
Cross-Border Transactions ,
Emerging Technology Companies ,
Export Controls ,
FIRRMA ,
Foreign Investment ,
National Security ,
NDAA ,
Trump Administration ,
U.S. Commerce Department ,
U.S. Treasury