One of the top concerns of the U.S. firearms industry is the delay in transitioning export controls of firearms and ammunition from the State Department to the Commerce Department, said Larry Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. As the wait for Export Control Reform has increased -- beginning in 2009 under the Obama administration and continuing under the Trump administration -- the U.S. firearms industry increasingly feels as if it has been left behind, Keane said.
Britain’s Home Secretary is removing the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group from its list of terrorism organizations, according to an Aug. 13 post on the European Sanctions blog. Although the move decriminalizes involvement with the group in the U.K, European Union and United Nations sanctions on the group remain in place.
U.S. companies can use their compliance programs to mitigate the impacts of updated CBP guidelines that will make it more expensive to secure goods seized for export violations, according to an Aug. 12 post by Sandler Travis. CBP recently issued its updated mitigation guidelines for export control seizures, announcing it is eliminating the terms “technical violations” and “substantive violations” (see 1908050038). But CBP also introduced a new set of mitigating and aggravating factors related to export control seizures, and an effective compliance program can play an important role in minimizing the cost, the post said. “CBP may reference these guidelines when making such decisions,” the post said, adding that “export compliance programs and other factors can help lower that cost.”
The U.S.’s second round of Russian sanctions are expected to have a “minimal” impact, according to a post by Norton Rose Fulbright.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security made several changes to its Entity List, adding, removing and modifying entries for companies in China, Canada, Malaysia, Russia, The United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and more. The changes add 17 entities to the list, modify 23 existing entries for China, Hong Kong and Russia, and remove three entities located in China and the UAE, BIS said in a notice. The changes take effect Aug. 14.
The Treasury Department’s most recent Venezuela-related general licenses “stop just short of a total embargo” on the country’s government, said Adrienne Braumiller, a trade lawyer and member of the Commerce Department’s Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee. Some companies will need to pay close attention to the updated expiration dates for certain general licenses, she said, and banks will be faced with a “new level of depth” to the complexity of screening their customers.
In the Aug. 9-12 editions of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
An Iranian citizen pleaded guilty Aug. 9 to conspiring to illegally export technology from the U.S. to Iran, the Justice Department said in a press release. Negar Ghodskani was arrested for the violations in 2017.
Republican senators urged the European Union to increase sanctions on the Nicolas Maduro-led regime in Venezuela, saying in a letter the EU should “align its sanctions regime” with that of the U.S. and Canada, according to an Aug. 8 Senate Foreign Relations Committee press release. The senators said the U.S. and Canada have imposed sanctions on more than 200 Venezuelan government officials, and the EU’s support would “send a powerful message” to Maduro.
South Korea said it will remove Japan from its so-called white list of trusted trading partners in apparent retaliation for Japan’s similar announcement last week, Reuters reported Aug. 12. The removal from the list, which gives countries a “fast-track trade status,” further escalates tensions between the two countries that have been locked in a trade dispute since early July (see 1908080039).