China

On March 22, 2018, the President issued a Presidential Memorandum in which he announced the actions the United States will take in response to China’s allegedly unfair trade practices found by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in its Section 301 investigation of China’s Acts, Policies, and Practices Related to Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property, and Innovation. The actions are as follows:

On Friday, February 23, 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) imposed blocking sanctions against one individual, twenty-seven entities and twenty-eight vessels known to have previously provided maritime support to North Korean coal and petroleum transactions. OFAC added the individuals, entities and vessels to its Specially Designated Nationals List (the “SDN List”), which will generally prohibit the fifty-six sanctioned parties from transacting with the United States or any United States person.

The Department of Commerce released its reports recommending remedies with respect to the Section 232 investigations of steel and aluminum today, February 16. The steel report was submitted to the White House on January 11, 2018 and started a statutory 90-day clock for the President to make a decision on a course of action. The aluminum report was submitted on January 19, 2018 and similarly started the statutory 90 days for the decision.

The U.S. Department of Commerce self-initiated trade cases for the first time since 1991 on Tuesday, November 28, on Chinese common alloy aluminum sheet. While Commerce normally opens antidumping and countervailing duty investigations only after requests from the domestic industry, the agency is authorized to self-initiate cases. Commerce last exercised this power for a countervailing duty case in 1991 and for an antidumping case in 1985.

Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement on Tuesday, “President Trump made it clear from day one that unfair trade practices will not be tolerated under this administration, and today, we take one more step in fulfilling that promise. We are self-initiating the first trade case in over a quarter century, showing once again that we stand in constant vigilance in support of free, fair and reciprocal trade.”