U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade is hosting a webinar on Thursday, June 20, 2024, at 3:00 p.m. ET titled De minimis: Back to Basics. The webinar will provide an overview of the basic filing requirements and data quality for the importation of de minimis shipments.
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is sanctioning ten individuals, entities, and vessels, including tanker captains, in multiple jurisdictions that have engaged in the illicit transport of oil and other commodities, including for the network of Houthi financial facilitator Sa’id al-Jamal. This action targets maritime shipping and financial facilitators, several vessel managers and owners, and a company involved in forging shipping documents.
A Turkish aviation operator was fined for ferrying passengers into and out of Russia on a US manufactured Gulfstream executive jet without the requisite export license. The Commerce Department (BIS) imposed a civil penalty of $285,000 against Sapphire Havacilik San Ltd. STI (Sapphire), an aviation company headquartered in Ankara, Türkiye, to resolve violations of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA). Although the Russian national passengers provided payment to Sapphire through third-party non-Russian charter brokers, such flights into Russia—which were arranged for the benefit of the Russian national or nationals on board—were nevertheless controlled by or under charter or lease by a Russian national. As such, the relevant flights did not fall within license exception Aircraft, Vessels, and Spacecraft (AVS) and violated Section 764.2(a) of the ECRA.
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned members of one of Guyana’s wealthiest families, Nazar Mohamed and his son, Azruddin Mohamed, their company, Mohamed’s Enterprise, and a Guyanese government official, Mae Thomas , for their roles in public corruption in Guyana. Azruddin and Mohamed’s Enterprise evaded Guyana’s tax on gold exports and defrauded the Guyanese government of tax revenues by underdeclaring their gold exports to Guyanese authorities. Between 2019 and 2023, Mohamed’s Enterprise omitted more than 10 thousand kilograms of gold from import and export declarations and avoided paying more than $50 million in duty taxes to the Government of Guyana.
Two men have been indicted and 17 snow machines seized as law enforcement broke up a scheme to ship the equipment to Russia by way of Hong Kong. Sergey Nefedov, 40, of Anchorage, Alaska, and Mark Shumovich, 35, of Bellevue, Washington, were arrested June 11. Both are Russian nationals and naturalized US Citizens. According to the indictment, Nefedov and Shumovich told freight forwarders that the snowmachines would be going to Hong Kong, where they knew that a license was not required for export, thereby causing a freight forwarder to provide false information to U.S. authorities by concealing the end user and destination of the snowmachines.
Donald Trump has proposed an "all tariff policy" which would replace the income tax, sources have told CNBC. CBP collected $80 billion in Tariff revenue in FY 2023. Revenues received by the federal government in 2023 totaled $4.4 trillion, of which half was receipts from individual income taxes, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Two Texas men, both of whom were convicted at trial, were sentenced today to 45 months in prison for attempting to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), conspiracy to violate IEEPA and conspiracy to commit money laundering based on their attempt to transact in sanctioned petroleum and launder the proceeds. The conspirators planned to start their scheme with a 500,000-barrel shipment of Iranian oil, but intended to increase the shipments to one or two million barrels per month for a year or more.
U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) published an updated Trade Fact Sheet providing a snapshot of the scope and volume of the bureau's activities. Duties and taxes collected in FY 2023, were $92 billion, down more than 17 percent from the prior year.
A renewed urgency has gripped Capitol Hill's China hawks to call for the Chief of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) to report on patents issued to Chinese inventors. In place since the Carter Administration and renewed every five years, the United States - China Science and Technology Agreement (STA) "is a vector to give the PRC access to U.S. dual-use research and presents a clear national security risk...The Biden Administration must stop fueling our own destruction and allow the STA to expire," the lawmakers write.
Central Washington Republican Dan Newhouse (R-WA) continues his efforts to limit Chinese land purchases, introducing the ‘No American Land for Communist China Act’’. This bill would prohibit any agent of the government of the PRC,, or any business with respect to which the Gov- ernment of the PRC owns 25 per- cent or more of the equity interests of the business, from purchasing land adjacent to federal land in the U.S, including Indian Country.
To support the Department's announcement of over 300 new sanctions Wednesday, Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is publishing Determinations, General Licenses and FAQs relating to trade with Russia and Belarus
In coordination with the Departments of Treasury and State, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is announcing several significant additional export control restrictions and related actions against Russia.. Among the actions is the issuance of a final rule imposing additional export control measures against Russia and Belarus by expanding the scope of items identified under two EAR supplements that are subject to the EAR’s Russian and Belarusian industry sector sanctions; imposing a “software” license requirement for certain EAR99-designated “software” when destined to or within Russia or Belarus; and narrowing the scope of commodities and software that may be authorized for export, reexport, or transfer (in- country) to or within Russia or Belarus under License Exception Consumer Communications Devices (CCD).
The Treasury and State Departments are issuing sweeping new measures guided by G7 commitments to intensify the pressure on Russia for its continued war against Ukraine. Wednesday's actions ratchet up the risk of secondary sanctions for foreign financial institutions that deal with Russia’s war economy; restrict the ability of Russian military-industrial base to take advantage of certain U.S. software and information technology (IT) services; and, together with the Department of State, target more than 300 individuals and entities.
Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on BMW to provide straight answers about its use of parts made by a banned Chinese supplier, following shifting explanations from the German automaker in response to a Finance Committee Democratic staff investigation. “The Committee is continuing to investigate several aspects of BMW’s exposure to forced labor through JWD, its tier 3 supplier,” the Senator wrote in a letter to the automaker.
Sen. Wyden said he hopes to move in an expeditious way on legislation similar to that approved by the Senate with strong bipartisan support three years ago. The lapse of GSP in 2020 has resulted in US companies shifting supply chains back to China, he said. Sen. Wyden also touched on renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which expires next year, saying Congress will need to look at how to encourage the use of the program and how to modernize it to address digital trade and innovation.
The United States International Trade Commission (USITC) Friday determined that there is a reasonable indication that a U.S. industry is materially injured by reason of imports of solar panels from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam that are allegedly sold in the United States at less than fair value and subsidized by the producers' home governments. As a result of the Commission’s affirmative determinations, the U.S. Department of Commerce will continue its investigations of imports, with its preliminary countervailing duty determinations due on or about July 18, 2024, and its preliminary antidumping duty determinations due on or about October 1, 2024.
Member countries of the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework began moving into the next phase of the agreement – implementation of the three completed pillars of clean economy, fair economy and supply chains. The fourth pillar of the IPEF – trade – remains stalled and there were no negotiations on trade at the Singapore ministerial. The countries, at a ministerial meeting in Singapore, committed to work expeditiously on their domestic processes for entry into force of the Clean Economy Agreement, Fair Economy Agreement and Agreement on IPEF. For the Supply Chain Agreement, IPEF partners are committed to quickly standing up the Supply Chain Council, Crisis Response Network and Labor Rights Advisory Board and to hold initial meetings of the bodies in the coming months.
A concept note issued ahead of the proposed workshop on the way forward in the World Trade Agriculture negotiations on July 2-3 acknowledges for the first time that the lack of progress in agriculture talks is due to “jettisoning of the single undertaking approach in the Doha negotiations in 2011.” The three-page concept note, titled “Rebuilding trust and progress to address contemporary challenges,” blames the stalled talks on the: “Difficulties in finding balances and trade-offs after the jettisoning of the single undertaking approach in the Doha negotiations in 2011, and the subsequent acknowledgment of differences on the agreed Doha negotiations framework and architecture as resulting from the Bali and Nairobi Decisions.”
Several industrialized countries, including the United States and China, as well as developing countries, actively engaged in the informal process launched by Brazil on how to move the agriculture negotiations forward, said people familiar with the developments. However, at that meeting, several other developing and some least-developed countries, including India, clearly signaled their indifference to a parallel informal process outside the discussions that come under the purview of the Doha agriculture negotiating body, which is rebranded as the Committee on Agriculture Special Session, said people familiar with the discussions.
Canadian helmet manufacturer Galvion, Ltd. has agreed to pay $2,495,000 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act through the knowing sale of non-conforming parts to the United States Department of Defense. Through prime vendors, the company sold products to the United States under a Defense Logistics Agency program which requires that textiles be sourced from the United States in accordance with the Berry Amendment. The investigation stemmed from a complaint made to the DLA Hotline related to the origin of materials used in the company’s products.
