A new U.K. law that could prevent lawyers from providing certain legal services in the context of Russia sanctions is causing uncertainty within the legal industry, law firms said. Baker McKenzie said the legal community is working with U.K. authorities to “clarify the scope of the new sanctions measures,” but “in lieu of any imminent published guidance, businesses should assess” their in-house legal teams, particularly if they’re providing legal advisory services from the U.K.
Sixteen trade groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, PhRMA and BIO, asked U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to press Mexico to comply with its USMCA commitments during her trip to Mexico for the Free Trade Commission meeting.
The U.K.'s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation dropped one name from its Russia sanctions regime in a July 6 notice, removing Lev Aronovich Khasis, former first deputy chairman of the executive board of PJSC Sberbank.
The European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee on July 6 adopted a draft law to address violating and circumventing EU sanctions. The law would impose a set of common definitions of sanctions breaches and set minimum penalties across the bloc, the parliament said. Violations would include not freezing funds or not respecting travel bans along with doing business with state-owned entities of nations subject to sanctions.
One of the leaders in the move to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act recently introduced a new bill that would require the administration to produce an annual report on foreign persons "found facilitating the exploitation of child labor" in the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and would instruct the administration to impose sanctions on those individuals.
The U.S. “firmly” opposes export controls by China on certain metals used to produce semiconductors, a Commerce Department spokesperson said July 6. “These actions underscore the need to diversify supply chains,” the person said in an email. “The United States will engage with our allies and partners to address this and to build resilience in critical supply chains.”
As the U.S. continues to expand its chip export controls, South Korean and other multinational firms with semiconductor investments in China “face an uncertain future,” the Peterson Institute for International Economics said in a report this week. The report, authored by PIIE senior fellow Martin Chorzempa, outlines both the “collateral damage and new opportunities” for South Korean companies as a result of the Commerce Department's Oct. 7 controls (see 2210070049), saying Korean firms “have been some of the most impacted non-Chinese firms due to their large memory chip production facilities in China.” The report also recommends the U.S. do more to “reduce uncertainty” for allies operating in the region.
The Bureau of Industry and Security could use its existing “catch-all controls” to tighten restrictions around exports of sensitive artificial intelligence models, eliminating the need to develop new regulations to address emerging AI export risks, researchers with Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology said this week. The researchers said the catch-all controls -- which allow BIS to restrict exports if there is “knowledge” the item will be used in certain dangerous ways -- may be “sufficient” to “address the use of AI in more traditional national security realms.”
A Puyallup, Washington, resident who illegally exported optical magnifiers to South Korea agreed to export compliance training as part of a settlement agreement announced by the Bureau of Industry and Security this week. If Jaeyoun Jung doesn’t complete the training, he may be subject to a two-year temporary denial order, BIS said.
International trade attorney John Anwesen left Crowell & Moring to found Lighthill, a boutique international trade law firm. Per his LinkedIn page, Anwesen founded the firm in June after working at Crowell for two years as an associate. He previously worked at BakerHostetler as an associate and at the Commerce Department as an attorney and trade compliance analyst. With Lighthill, Anwesen will focus on trade remedy proceedings, "customs matters, export controls, and sanctions."