For the first time in 100 years, the House of Representatives was unable to choose a speaker on the first vote. Because 19 Republicans this week voted for someone other than Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., no candidate got a majority of the votes. The same result happened on the second vote.
Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Majority Leader-elect, told his colleagues in a Dec. 30 letter that he plans to bring 11 pieces of legislation for a vote during the first two weeks of the 118th Congress, including a bill that would establish a Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
The Congressional Research Service this month published an overview of sanctions legislation introduced during the 117th Congress, including country-specific sanctions bills, bills related to human rights and terrorism sanctions, and other matters that sought to address sanctions policy. Members of Congress introduced more than 350 sanctions bills during the past two years, the report said, and seven have been signed into law.
Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., one of the leading voices for free trade in the Democratic caucus, and Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., a free-trade purist in the Republican caucus, issued a joint paper of recommendations on trade on Dec. 29, just before they were both leaving office.
The Biden administration shouldn’t relax restrictions on U.S. financial transactions with Cuba, which are needed to “hold the communist regime in Cuba accountable for human rights abuses and its sponsorship of international terrorism,” Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said in a Dec. 20 letter to the White House. The letter, signed by Sens. Jim Risch, of Idaho, and Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, both of Florida, specifically asks Biden not to revoke Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.
The fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act includes several sanctions and export control related provisions, including measures that would require more sanctions reporting by the Biden administration, Morrison Foerster said in a recent client alert. One provision will require the president to submit a periodic report to Congress listing foreign people and entities knowingly participating in significant transactions involving Russian gold, while another will require the director of national intelligence to submit semiannual reports on the effects of U.S. sanctions against Russia. Another provision will require the DNI to study ways to provide “enhanced intelligence support” for export controls and foreign investment screening, the alert said.
New general licenses issued this week by the Treasury Department may be misused to fund terrorist efforts and human rights violations, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said. Although the licenses are designed to allow Treasury to better authorize humanitarian aid to sanctioned countries (see 2212200035), McCaul said they could help companies and banks inadvertently send money and aid to the wrong people.
On the last day of the current Congress, retiring Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, introduced a bill that would ask the Commerce Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to analyze the economic integration between the U.S. and China in priority sectors, and the U.S. government's views of how that integration should change over the next five to 19 years.
Congress this week passed a bill that would impose sanctions on people and entities involved in stealing U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property. The bill, passed by the Senate Dec. 20 and by the House Dec. 22, would require the president to compile a report of “foreign individuals and entities that have knowingly engaged in, benefited from, or assisted in the significant theft of U.S. trade secrets that materially contributed to a significant threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy, or economic health,” including senior executives “of any foreign entity engaging in such theft.” The sanctions could include “property- or export-blocking sanctions, including denial of certain financial assistance, on entities named in the report.”
The Senate on Dec. 21 confirmed Alexis Taylor to be USDA’s undersecretary for trade and foreign agricultural affairs. Taylor touted the importance of the Indo-Pacific region during her September nomination hearing (see 2209230028).