The U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned CEIEC (China National Electronic Import-Export Company), a Chinese technology exporter, for its alleged support to the Maduro government in Venezuela. As a result of CEIEC’s addition to OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals List, all property and interests belonging to CEIEC, or any entity
The Trump Administration has encountered further setbacks in its efforts to prevent Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. (“ByteDance”) from providing its popular social media app TikTok in the U.S. For background:
President Trump issued an Executive Order (“E.O.”) on November 12, 2020 titled “Addressing the Threat from Securities Investments that Finance Communist Chinese Military Companies.” The E.O., which will be published in the Federal Register on November 17, 2020 and will take effect on January 11, 2021 at 9:30 eastern standard time, designates thirty one (31)
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) issued a final rule effective October 29, 2020 amending Section 742.4(b)(7) of the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) to revise the license review policy for items controlled for National Security reasons (“NS items”) destined for the People’s Republic of China (“China”), Venezuela, or the Russian
The U.S. International Trade Commission (“ITC”) found on October 20, 2020 that glass containers from China do not injure the U.S. industry, and thus made a negative determination in the final phase of the antidumping duty (“AD”) investigation. The ITC’s negative AD determination follows its negative countervailing duty (“CVD”) determination that was published in the
On October 14, 2020, the U.S. Secretary of State, pursuant to section 5(a) of the Hong Kong Autonomy Act (“HKAA”), submitted a report to Congress identifying foreign persons who are “materially contributing to, have materially contributed to, or attempt to materially contribute to the failure of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) to meet its
A federal judge from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted TikTok’s motion for preliminary injunction, resulting in a nationwide temporary suspension of an order from the U.S. Department of Commerce (“Commerce”) for Apple and Google to remove TikTok from its U.S. app stores. Last week, Chinese social media app WeChat was
China-based smartphone apps, TikTok and WeChat, have each received a reprieve from the respective bans, which were originally ordered by President Trump on August 6, 2020 against both parties and were scheduled to take effect on September 21, 2020. Please see our previous post covering the Executive Orders. Pursuant to the Executive Orders banning the
On September 10, 2020, HMTX Industries LLC, along with Halstead New England Corporation, and Metroflor Corporation (importers of vinyl tile) filed a complaint (Ct. No. 20-00177) at the Court of International Trade (CIT) challenging both the substantive and procedural processes followed by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) when instituting Section 301 Tariffs on imports
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (“USTR”) issued two (2) new product exclusions pertaining to the Section 301 List 3 tariffs. The current tariff is 25%. The new exclusions include 2 specific product descriptions that together cover 2 separate exclusion requests. According to the USTR, the product exclusions apply retroactively from September 24, 2018