The fate of two mandated decisions from last year’s World Trade Organization 12th ministerial conference on the extension of the TRIPS Agreement to cover COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics and the termination of the 1998 electronic commerce moratorium will dominate the proceedings when the General Council meets on December 14-15. Failure to reach decisions as per the MC12 mandates at this week's GC meeting could cast a dark shadow on the MC13 meeting that is going to start in Abu Dhabi on February 26, said people familiar with the developments.

The US goods and services deficit was $64.3 billion in October, up $3.1 billion from $61.2 billion in September, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. October exports were $258.8 billion, $2.6 billion less than September exports while imports were up $500 million to $323 billion.

Questions are being raised about a new report on the relationship between digital trade and development issued jointly by the World Trade Organization along with the International Monetary Fund, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Some of the major findings in the report seem flawed on several grounds, raising serious questions about the use of the report for WTO members, said people engaged in the negotiations.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Mexico’s Secretary of Finance and Public Credit Rogelio Ramírez de la O signed a Memorandum of Intent Thursday to affirm the importance of foreign investment screening in protecting national security and express their desire to establish a bilateral working group for regular exchanges of information about how investment screening can best protect national security.

The Department of State issued the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act (UHRPA) Report to Congress; Treasury is sanctioning two Chinese government officials for their connection to serious human rights abuses in Xinjiang; and the Department of Homeland Security-led interagency Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force added of three PRC entities to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List.

Thursday, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) released three rules as part of a broad effort to ease several categories of export licensing requirements and expand the availability of export license exceptions for key allied and partner countries, as well as for members of certain multilateral export control regimes.

A report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee highlights shortcomings in the U.S. export control system and calls for reforms, legislative and administrative.   Drawing extensively on the work of former Defense Department Export Control Official Stephen Coonen, the report offers a preview of the reception BIS officials can expect in next week's hearing. "Both the Trump and Biden administrations, principally from the White House, have rightly begun exerting more control over the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). However, no administration will be able to fully leverage the power of export controls to protect U.S. national security without Congressional action. Now, Congress must solidify the efforts of successive administrations so our future will be better secured," the authors assert. Central to the committee's findings is the concern that BIS, under the Commerce Department, has been too lenient in granting licenses for dual-use technology transfers to China, failing to adequately consider the likelihood of military or surveillance use.

Following Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s call for additional funds for the Bureau of Industry and Security – the Department’s enforcement arm for export controls, Republican members of Congress called for a harder line on China first.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee announced the Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability will convene a hearing entitled, “Reviewing the Bureau of Industry and Security, Part II: U.S. Export Controls in an Era of Strategic Competition” on Tuesday, December 12th.

Tuesday, Republican members of the House Committee on Small Business wrote to Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez regarding the Bureau of Industry and Security’s …

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating 11 entities and seven individuals pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 14038 and one individual pursuant to E.O. 14024. This action increases the pressure on Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s authoritarian regime for its suppression of Belarus’s democratic civil society, financial enrichment of the Lukashenka family, and complicity in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is targeting a network led by Belgian serial offender Hans De Geetere involved in procuring electronics with military applications for Russian end-users. …

In order to monitor steel imports in real-time and to provide the public with real-time data, the Department of Commerce must collect and provide timely aggregated summaries about these imports. The Steel Import License is the tool used to collect the necessary information.

The Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration, seeks nominations for immediate consideration to fill positions on the Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness (“The Committee”).

A German company, KingKong-Tools GmbH & Co KG, and its American subsidiary will pay $1.9 million to settle allegations of customs fraud under the False Claims Act. The government alleged that King Kong was falsely labelling its tools as “made in Germany” when, in fact, the tools were made in China. By misrepresenting the origin of the tools, King Kong avoided paying higher tariffs. 

The Department of State temporarily modifies the United States Munitions List (USML) Category VIII to accommodate the Korean production of their KF-21 Stealth Fighter. The Department assessed that this temporary modification does not change the export jurisdiction or classification of any existing commodities, as it only prevents the possibility of future release from paragraph (h)(1) due to use in the KF–21, which has not yet entered into production. Therefore, when the KF–21 enters production, any paragraph (h)(1) commodities authorized for export for this purpose will retain their current export classification described in paragraph (h)(1).

The United States will host the 10th session of the Conference of the States Parties (COSP) to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in Atlanta from December 11-15, 2023.

India, South Africa, and Egypt criticized the ongoing informal discussions led by a facilitator concerning reforms to the World Trade Organization's (WTO) dispute settlement system. They expressed concerns about the process's integrity and transparency, leading to "information asymmetry," according to sources familiar with the talks. During a recent Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) meeting, many developing countries supported the concerns raised by these three nations regarding the informal process. These discussions, facilitated by Guatemala's deputy-trade envoy, Marco Tulio Molina Tejeda, originated from US-initiated talks in April 2022.

President Biden presided over the first meeting of his newly-created Council on Supply Chain Resilience, formed to prevent the shortages in medical and consumer products that took place during the global pandemic.  His Administration’s efforts to strengthen US supply chains also means more domestic manufacturing and less reliance on imports, the President said. “Today, our supply chains are stronger than ever, with backlogs, bottlenecks, and shipping rates at a 25-year low,” he said. “We've created 14 million new jobs, including 800,000 manufacturing jobs.”

A bipartisan group of 32 senators – including the Senate Finance Committee leaders – is calling on President Biden to reversing a decision to drop long-standing US positions at the World Trade Organization on digital trade. The US Trade Representative’s Office recently pulled back from supporting provisions on the free flow of data across borders and prohibiting forced localization of data as part of ongoing e- commerce negotiations at the WTO. “Retreating from our longstanding principles without offering a viable alternative does not help US workers, it does not help US consumers, it does not help US businesses, and it does not help US allies; it only helps our adversaries,” the senators wrote in a letter to President Biden.