Background

On January 5, 2023, President Biden signed into law S. 1294, the “Protecting American Intellectual Property Act of 2022”. The Act requires the president to report to Congress and impose sanctions on any foreign person or entity the president identifies that has committed or “provided significant financial, material, or technological support” for the significant theft of trade secrets that are “reasonably likely to result in or has materially contributed to a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States.”Continue Reading Potential Sanctions for Alleged Intellectual Property Theft on the Horizon?

  • BIS added 33 Chinese companies to the Unverified List.
  • The UVL places lesser restrictions designees than an Entity List or Sanctions designation
  • BIS may not have been able to verify the entities because of new Chinese laws restricting compliance with extraterritorial laws; creating a potential conflict of laws for these and other companies.

Continue Reading Verify, Then Trust: Commerce Adds 33 Parties in China to Unverified List

On September 19, 2020, China took a new strategic position in its ongoing trade confrontation with the United States. The Ministry of Commerce of the PRC (“MOFCOM”) issued Regulations on Unreliable Entity List (“UEL”) and drew wide public attention to the beginning of the PRC government’s retaliation against the Trump Administration’s recent restrictions on Chinese entities including Huawei, TikTok and WeChat. It is notable that MOFCOM deliberated with more than a year of internal discussion before implementing the UEL.
Continue Reading Certainties and Uncertainties Under China’s New Unreliable Entity List

Opening Salvos: The Proposed Tariffs

On June 26, 2020, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) published a notice that it is considering new tariffs on exports such as olives, coffee, beer, gin, and trucks coming into the United States from France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom.[1] The list of potential targets also includes various types of bread, pastries, cakes, and other baked products. That new list of goods may face duties of up to 100%, potentially doubling the price of certain goods [2] The announcement caused European stocks to fall, particularly for shares of beverage companies, luxury goods companies, and truck makers.
Continue Reading A Trade War on Two Fronts: U.S. Considers More Tariffs on European Goods

An updated version of this article was posted on January 16, 2020.

With round after round of tariffs on Chinese goods, announcements, removals, exclusions, delays, increases and, of course, tweets regarding all of the above, it can be easy to get lost on where, exactly, things stand with respect to Tariffs implemented under Section 301 of the Trade Act. Below we provide a brief overview and reference chart, complete with links to the relevant notices. We will update the chart as the U.S. government adds, removes, or changes the tariffs.

** Updated as of September 3, 2019 **Continue Reading China Trade War Scorecard: Keeping Track of Tariffs

*This is an updated version of the February 21st blog post.

Key Takeaways:

Many U.S. companies continue to struggle under the burden of President Trump’s tariffs on imports from China. The President has postponed a scheduled March 2, 2019 deadline to increase the tariff rate on many Chinese products from 10 to 25 percent.

When we went to press with the first version of this article (February 21, 2019), negotiations between the United States and China had failed to reach an agreement that would prevent the tariff increase.

Now the President has decided that progress in those negotiations has been “substantial.” On that basis, he directed U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to postpone the March 2 tariff increase until further notice.
Continue Reading Update from the Trump Trade War Front: Tariffs Will Not Increase March 2*

We’ll give him this: President Trump has an ambitious trade agenda. This fire has many irons in it, and some of them are getting hot. Here at the Global Trade Law Blog, we’ve been following trade law for approximately 250 years and we’ve never seen anything like it in breadth or scale. The administration asks us to trust that there is a disruptive and innovative grand strategy behind it, but to some of us it looks (particularly in comparison to a mostly orderly international trading system in place since 1945) like madness. The question of whether “yet there is method in’t” may only be answered by future historians. For the time being, herewith is our snapshot of the Trump trade agenda, late June 2018 edition.
Continue Reading 5 Weird Things About the Trump Trade Agenda: Disruptive Innovation On a Global Scale

In what has become his trademark Trumpian manner, the President announced last Friday that new tariffs and trade restrictions against China are on again, at the same moment that his senior Commerce and Treasury Department negotiators were trying to work out a deal in Beijing. This came just a handful of days after Department of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the trade war with China was “on hold.” The President has declared again in a tweet Saturday that America “can’t lose” a trade war with China. We’ve debunked that fallacy here. But even if one accepts the premise that we should prosecute a trade war, it’s well established that a micromanaging general quickly loses the confidence of his ground troops. Wars have been lost for less. On trade, the President’s conflicting directives have everyone a little confused. Here are the highlights for the time being:
Continue Reading Another Day Another Tariff… and Other Recent Restrictions on China

On April 3, 2018, President Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative released a list of 1300 categories of Chinese goods that will be subject to 25% tariffs. That followed a tit-for-tat exchange in which President Trump announced a round of steel and aluminum tariffs on March 8, and China announced tariffs on U.S. imports worth around $3 billion on April 2 (including American pork, fruit, wine and steel pipes). On April 5, China responded with a list of $50 billion of U.S. goods that will be subject to increased tariffs (including aircraft, automobiles, and soybeans). That same day, Mr. Trump announced that he is looking for $100 billion additional Chinese goods to tax.
Continue Reading Five Things You Must Know About Trade Wars

On July 27, 2017, the U.S. Congress sent to President Trump’s desk a bill that imposes new financial sanctions against Russia, Iran, and North Korea. It appears nearly certain that the president will sign that bill, now called the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act” (CAATSA). Edit: President Trump signed the bill on August 2, 2017.
Continue Reading In the Chaos of (Trade) War, Where Does Your Company Find Peace?