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.

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).

The White House is delaying decisions on Huawei export licenses after China announced it was suspending purchases of U.S. agricultural products, Bloomberg reported Aug. 8. President Donald Trump announced in June that the U.S. planned to loosen restrictions on Huawei, but that promise was contingent on China increasing U.S. agricultural purchases, Bloomberg said. In an Aug. 1 tweet, Trump said China is not buying enough agricultural goods and announced a 10 percent tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.

The Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee appears to be among the advisory committees that aren't eligible for elimination under a recent executive order. President Donald Trump issued an executive order in June that directed all federal departments and agencies to eliminate one-third of their current Federal Advisory Committee Act-authorized committees by Sept. 30 (see 1906170021). Committees authorized by statute aren't eligible for elimination and, according to a search on the FACA database, there are 22 trade-focused committees that are required by statute.

China's newly announced Shanghai Free Trade Zone will continue “regardless” of its trade relationship with the U.S., China’s Vice Commerce Minister and top trade negotiator Wang Shouwen said during an Aug. 6 press conference, according to an unofficial translation of a transcript from it.

Japan is approving exports for a semiconductor manufacturing material to South Korea days after removing the country from its list of trusted trading partners, stressing that South Korea’s removal from the list was not an export embargo, Japan’s trade minister Hiroshige Seko said during an Aug. 8 press conference. But Seko also said Japan will not hesitate to increase export restrictions on South Korea if it finds more “specific inappropriate cases” of South Korea’s export control regime, according to an unofficial translation of the press conference.

LIz Truss, the secretary of state for international trade in the United Kingdom, said her country is looking forward to "leaving the straitjacket of the EU," and said that a free trade agreement with the U.S. "is the inevitable next step." Truss, who met with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer during her visit to Washington, said they're trying to "get things moving."

There may not be a solution to the Japan-South Korean trade dispute, said James Schoff, a senior fellow for The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Schoff suggested that the rift between the two sides is not solely about export controls but is instead the result of a culmination of many factors -- including a decline in trust -- and may not be salvable.

The Japan-South Korea trade dispute may impact the U.S. and potentially require the intervention of U.S. export control officials, experts said during an Aug. 7 Heritage Foundation panel discussion. They also said it will be difficult for South Korea to get back on Japan’s so-called “whitelist” of preferential trading partners, a move that could hurt Japanese companies more than any other party.

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for July 29 - Aug. 2 in case they were missed.