The U.K. should mirror the enforcement practices of U.S. agencies by publicizing the details of sanctions and export control penalties, which would help British companies better comply with trade restrictions, industry officials and a researcher told U.K. lawmakers this week. The U.K. should sharply raise penalties on businesses that violate sanctions to convince industry to invest more heavily in trade compliance, the researcher said.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, reintroduced a bill Jan. 31 that would direct the State Department to designate four Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
Australia has announced sanctions on several groups and people under its counterterrorism financing sanctions authority, including an online group linked to attacks on critical infrastructure, entities tied to Russia and a senior Hezbollah official.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he officially brought back the Cuba Restricted List on Jan. 31, part of an effort by the Trump administration to reverse last-minute moves by President Joe Biden that removed certain sanctions against the country (see 2501220008 and 2501170021). The U.S. also added an entity to the list: Orbit, S.A., which the State Department said is a remittance-processing company with ties to the Cuban military. The Cuba Restricted List includes entities that are subject to certain financial restrictions because of their ties to the Cuban government.
Companies should expect Trump administration to take an increasingly aggressive stance on China-related inbound and outbound investment restrictions, especially because of the makeup of President Donald Trump’s team and key Cabinet officials, a former Treasury Department official and trade consultant said.
U.S. export controls are increasingly trending toward unilateral, extraterritorial restrictions as opposed to multilateral ones, and that could continue under the administration of President Donald Trump, said Jeannette Chu, vice president for national security policy at the National Foreign Trade Council.
Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., urged the Commerce Department Feb. 3 to strengthen export controls following the recent “breakthrough development” of an advanced artificial intelligence model by Chinese startup DeepSeek.
The Bureau of Industry and Security last week modified its temporary denial order against Russian airline Azur Air to update the airline’s address. The order now lists Azur Air as located in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. It was previously listed with a Moscow address. BIS last renewed the order for one year in September, barring the airline from participating in transactions with items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (see 2409200059).
The Pentagon's response to Chinese lidar company Hesai Technology's claims against its designation as a Chinese military company shows that the department "has no evidence" and "made no finding" that the company is "in any way connected to the Chinese military," Hesai said in a brief at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Hesai Technology Co. v. United States, D.D.C. # 24-01381).
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, reintroduced a bill Jan. 30 that would sanction Chinese individuals and entities that engage in a pattern of intellectual property theft from the U.S.