Singapore police arrested three men after Singapore Customs said they imported about $300,000 worth of counterfeit cellphone parts from China, the customs agency said in a May 2 press release. Customs first discovered the scheme in April, when officials intercepted a shipment from China at the Changi Airfreight Centre of more than 500 phone parts, Customs said. After “raids” at three separate locations, police said they found more than 3,400 counterfeit phone parts imported by the three men with “falsely applied trademarks of well-known brands.” Customs said the men imported the parts for “the purpose of trade.” The maximum penalty for importing or selling counterfeit goods is $100,000 and five years in prison, Customs said.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control reached a settlement of about $870,000 with a New York-based shipbroking company that OFAC said violated weapons-related sanctions five times. The company, MID-SHIP Group LLC, violated the Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators Sanctions Regulations by negotiating contracts among ship owners and charterers worth about $470,000 between February and November 2011, OFAC said May 2. The ships used in the transfers were owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), which was sanctioned by OFAC in 2008.
The U.S. trade war with China resulted in a 7 percent drop in goods exports -- $9 billion worth -- from 2017 to 2018, according to a new report from the U.S.-China Business Council. Even with the drop, the U.S. exported more to China in 2018 than it did in 2016. The report blamed China's retaliatory tariffs on about 85 percent of U.S. exports for the decline.
U.S. economic sanctions are on a path toward losing power and impact, potentially undercutting a variety of tools used in U.S. foreign policy, according to a study published April 29 by the Center for a New American Security. The study, “Economic Dominance, Financial Technology, and the Future of U.S. Economic Coercion,” examines the current state of U.S. economic sanctions and makes several predictions, portraying a muddy outlook for the future of U.S. sanctioning tools. “If policymakers want to be able to continue deploying coercive economic tools effectively … they must ... get ahead of trends that could, if left unchecked, weaken some of the most important tools of U.S. foreign policy,” the study said.
Vietnam Customs detained five containers after discovering the number of goods inside was greater than the number declared by the company on its customs forms, according to an April 29 report from its CustomsNews website. The company, K.L Import Export Trading Production Company Limited, wrote in its customs declaration that it was importing about 3,000 stainless steel sinks from China, but the report said customs officers found more than 5,000 sinks in the containers. The products also did not have a brand label, which also violated Vietnam customs laws, the report said.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo that there's still more work to do on a trade deal with China, but said, "I think there's a real strong desire by both sides to see if we can wrap this up or move on." He said he hopes -- after this week's talks in China and next week's negotiations in Washington -- "to be at the point where we can either recommend to the president we have a deal or make a recommendation that we don't."
Jacob Lew, a former chief of staff and Treasury secretary under President Barack Obama, called the Trump administration's approach to trade and sanctions “troubling,” saying the administration is placing unneeded stress on U.S. allies and damaging the effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy. Speaking April 30 at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think-tank focused on national security, Lew was critical of Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, was skeptical of the president’s “brute force” approach to trade deals and pointed to “worrisome trends” that he said will lead to U.S. undermining its own sanctions. Among those trends, Lew said, are “ambiguous diplomatic objectives, growing unpredictability, increased unilateral action” and a “narrow focus on isolated policies with less regard for the broader context.”