As semiconductor industry officials were on Capitol Hill  urging lawmakers against imposing more export controls on the sale of high-tech chips to China, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) called on manufacturers to put US national security first. In a statement, Rep. McCaul said he supports the Administrations restrictions on exports to China and believes controls need to be further updated to address artificial intelligence technology.

Indiana Republican Congressman Jim Banks has introduced legislation to revoke China's normal trade relations status. The same legislation has been introduced in the Senate by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo).

World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala apparently received a frosty response from several members, including the United States, to her “modest budget increase of CHF 14.56 million (around $ 15 million) for 2024,” and an additional CHF 1.94 million for 2025, according to our correspondent.

Indonesia has offered an optimistic outlook during the recent World Trade Organization's (WTO) "Fish Week" discussions, pushing towards a balanced agreement about fishery subsidies, particularly focusing on issues of overcapacity and overfishing.

The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday announced two enforcement actions against Deutsche Bank AG, its New York branch, and other U.S. affiliates. First, the Board issued a consent order and a $186 million fine based on unsafe and unsound practices and violations of the Board's 2015 and 2017 consent orders with Deutsche Bank relating to sanctions compliance and anti-money laundering controls.

Despite tariffs on imported steel and aluminum products under Section 232, companies can apply to Commerce to be excluded from paying these tariffs. Commerce then tells Customs and Border Protection how to administer approved exclusions. Companies didn't use the majority of the exclusions, and CBP generally administered them as instructed. However, weaknesses in CBP's process allowed some exclusions to be used incorrectly. This resulted in $32 million in unpaid duties, as of November 2021.

U.S. Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) have introduced the Global Investment in American Jobs Act of 2023, a bipartisan bill with the objective of boosting America's global competitiveness and attracting foreign direct investment to the nation. The bill calls for a comprehensive government-wide review of strategies to enhance America's attractiveness to foreign investors. The Secretary of Commerce will be tasked with conducting this review and subsequently reporting the findings to Congress.

Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) President and Chair Reta Jo Lewis traveled to Luanda, Angola, where she met with government leaders, private sector companies and external stakeholders to highlight EXIM's activity in the region.   She also spoke at the Luanda International Trade Fair. In June, Exim approved a direct loan for more than $900 million to the Ministry of Energy and Water of the Republic of Angola to support the construction of two photovoltaic solar energy power plants.

The global trading system stands at a crossroads with the emergence of two significant trade frameworks in the Pacific region. During a panel discussion in the Trade Winds event series on Wednesday, experts and former trade officials from the United States and South Korea discussed the roles and potential impacts of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).

In a sternly worded letter to CEO Jim Farley of the Ford Motor Company, two of the House’s leading China Hawks lashed into the company’s plans to license Chinese technology for electric vehicle battery production, calling for access to Ford’s business records and correspondence related to the deal.

The U.S. Trade Representative has to submit a report to Congress regarding the operation of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) on or before December 31, 2023. The deadline for the submission of written comments is 11:59 EDT on August 18, 2023.

With everyone in Washington now holding an opinion on Export Controls, the State Department's Bureau of Political - Military Affairs published a useful one pager.

BIS has published best practices for submitting export license applications for medical-related items destined for Russia, Belarus, and the occupied/covered regions of Ukraine. It reflects the U.S. Government's position that the Russian and Belarusian people are not the target of export controls imposed on Russia and Belarus due to their activities in Ukraine.

Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control designated dozens of entities as Washington continues to apply economic pressure on Moscow for it's invation of Ukraine. The July 20 actions address munitions, metals & mining, finance, energy and aerospace technology interests.

The European Council adopted a decision 20 July authorising the Commission to open negotiations, on behalf of the EU, with the United States on a Critical Minerals Agreement (CMA) and the related negotiating directives. This agreement seeks to strengthen critical minerals supply chains and mitigate some of the negative repercussions of the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on EU industry.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a notice republishing and superseding the previous General Notice published on December 2, 2022. This notice pertains to the National Customs Automation Program (NCAP) Test, concerning the submission of unique entity identifiers for the Global Business Identifier (GBI) Evaluative Proof of Concept (EPoC) via the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE).

The United States and Mexico announced a course of remediation to address denials of rights at the Goodyear facility in the city and state of San Luis Potosí. The announcement marks the fourth time the United States and Mexico have agreed on a formal course of remediation under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)’s Facility-Specific Rapid Response Labor Mechanism (RRM).   The July 19th announcement follows a request the United States sent to Mexico on May 22, 2023, asking Mexico to review whether Goodyear was failing to provide workers with the beneficial terms of an existing sector-wide agreement (contrato ley) in place for the rubber manufacturing industry.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has instituted the first of five investigations that will synthesize and critically review information on the potential distributional effects of goods …

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Alexis Taylor will lead an agribusiness trade mission to Malaysia and Singapore on Oct. 30-Nov. 3.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) reintroduced the Sanctioning Supporters of Slave Labor Act to impose secondary sanctions on those that conduct business with, or provide support for, foreign entities who have been sanctioned for their links to Uyghur human rights abuses.