On April 17, 2024, the United States Trade Representative (“USTR”) initiated an investigation pursuant to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (“Section 301”) regarding China’s acts, policies, and practices to dominate the maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding sector. The investigation was initiated following the filing of a (“Petition”) by several domestic labor unions (“Petitioners”) representing these industries. The USTR encourages interested parties to submit comments on any issue covered by the investigation. Comments are due by May 22, 2024 ..read more

Many companies, particularly Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) and start-up companies, continue to struggle with the concept of export control classification of items with encryption functionality. This ongoing confusion is understandable for a few reasons. First, many SaaS companies do not export their software in the traditional sense. Software purchasing has moved beyond the days of downloading and installing software onto a computer from, for example, a CD-ROM. (Most newer laptops no longer contain disc drives.) But these companies may still unknowingly be exporting software according to regu ..read more

On April 19, 2024, the Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) published an interim final rule (“Interim Rule”), amending the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) to enhance cooperation and technological innovation between the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom (“UK”) pursuant to the AUKUS Trilateral Security Partnership (“AUKUS ..read more

March 2024 was a busy month for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP” or “Customs”) with respect to the Enforce and Protect Act (“EAPA”) regulations related to the evasion of antidumping and countervailing duties (“AD/CVD”). On March 11, CBP made a new dashboard available, which allows the public to review statistics related to EAPA cases that have made it to the “interim measures” or “determination of evasion” stages of investigations. Separately, on March 18, CBP published a final rule, which adopts amendments to the initial EAPA regulations originally published as an interim final rule ..read more

The U.S. agencies most well-known for their enforcement of U.S. trade and national security laws are the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”), the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (“DDTC”), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP” or “Customs”). However, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) can often play a critical role in these types of matters.  ..read more

Today, on the brink of the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Biden announced additional sanctions and export controls against Russia and entities in third countries that have supported the Russian war effort. The describes that the 500 new sanctions against Russia are “for its ongoing war of conquest on Ukraine and for the death of Aleksey Navalny,” the Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist that suspiciously died in a Russian prison on February 16 ..read more

On December 26, 2023, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (“USTR”) announced the extension to May 31, 2024, of all current exclusions from Section 301 tariffs on Chinese-origin goods. The extended exclusions include 77 COVID-related exclusions and 352 previously reinstated exclusions.  ..read more

In its third memorandum in the past two years, BIS recently announced further updates to its Voluntary Self-Disclosure (VSD) process related to administrative violations. My last covered BIS’s April 18, 2023 memorandum, which discussed incentives for companies to disclose violations after uncovering “significant violations” or risk higher penalties because a failure to disclose will be treated as an aggravating factor ..read more

On December 28, 2023, a federal court sentenced New Hampshire charity NuDay (a/k/a NuDay Syria) to five years of probation – the maximum sentence for an organizational defendant – for three counts of Failure to File Export Information ..read more

Global maritime shipping is the keystone of international commerce. So when international shipping is in crisis, global trade and supply chains are likewise brought into crisis. The shipping sector has faced many challenges to ocean transit over the last several years. As we can see from the current global news headlines, the shipping sector is facing yet another significant challenge from the Houthi rebel attacks on ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, a necessary route for vessels transiting the Suez Canal.  ..read more