On August 11, 2020, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a new guidance document, the Sudan Program and Darfur Sanctions Guidance (“Sudan Guidance”), which clarifies the current status of sanctions and export controls that apply to Sudan and the Government of Sudan. The Sudan…
The Department of Commerce (the Department) has proposed to modify its regulations under Part 351 of Title 19 to improve administration and enforcement of the antidumping duty (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) laws.[1] The proposed modifications have been undertaken with a view to address circumvention and evasion of duties and…
On August 17, 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) made available for public inspection a final rule expanding restrictions on Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. and its non-U.S. affiliates on the BIS Entity List (collectively “Huawei”). In the final rule, BIS announced a further expansion…
On July 23, 2020, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021 (NDAA) which includes an amendment that expands sanctions in connection with the Nord Stream 2 and TurkStream pipeline projects. The amendment is based on a bill previously introduced by Senators…
On August 6, 2020, President Trump issued a pair of executive orders targeting China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. (Tencent) and its mobile application WeChat and ByteDance Ltd. (ByteDance) and its mobile application TikTok. The orders instructed the U.S. Commerce Department to prohibit the following within 45 days from their issuance (by…
Over the past nine months, companies and governments have competed for goods and materials amidst scarcity and disrupted supply chains. At the same time, governments, central banks, international organizations and NGOs have poured money into economies, hoping to provide relief, meet demand to procure essential goods, and find solutions to…
As we’ve discussed previously, in 2018, the UK enacted the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act (the Act), allowing it to impose its own post-Brexit autonomous sanctions regime. On July 6, 2020, the UK imposed its first sanctions under the Act: the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020 (the Regulations). Under…
On July 1, 2020, the United-States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) entered into force, replacing the 26-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The U.S. government has taken several steps toward implementation via executive order and proposed regulations, but the legal framework remains a work in progress. One of the most closely watched…
The U.S. government has issued several rules aimed at excluding, and in some cases removing, Chinese-origin equipment from U.S. telecommunications networks. Most of these rules apply to U.S. government networks, but some extend to private sector telecom infrastructure and services with no nexus to the U.S. government. Wireline Competition Bureau…
Since the handover of Hong Kong by the United Kingdom to China in 1997, Hong Kong has enjoyed separate treatment from the mainland by the United States, other countries and international organizations pursuant to the “one country, two systems” model agreed to by the Chinese government. The United States-Hong Kong…