As the Commerce and State departments move forward with their effort to finalize changes to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), satellite companies must be properly prepared to understand the enforcement, compliance and implementation aspects of the rules, a government official and compliance experts said Nov. 19 at a Washington Space Business Roundtable event. By the end of the year, the agencies plan to complete a final draft of the new rules, which mainly focus on moving satellite components and technology that aren't crucial to military operations and national security from the munitions list to the less restrictive Commerce Control List (CCL), said Kevin Wolf, assistant secretary of commerce for export administration.
U.S. and European Union trade officials convened in Brussels on Nov. 11 to launch five days of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) said Nov. 11. Negotiations will initially focus on investment rules and trade in services, USTR said, while officials also plan to broach regulatory coherence, technical barriers to trade, sectoral approaches and sanitary and phytosanitary measures, among other topics. The next round of negotiations is scheduled to be held Dec. 16-20 in Washington, D.C. (see 13110409). Industry leaders pressed comprehensive tariff elimination in a final TTIP pact, along with possible increases to de minimis levels, during an Oct. 30 Senate Finance Committee hearing (see 13103107).
The U.S. and European Union will conduct the second round of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks from Nov. 11-15 in Brussels, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) said on Nov. 4 in a press release. Negotiations will cover services, investment, energy and raw materials, and regulatory issues, the USTR said. The following round of negotiations will be held Dec. 16-20 in Washington D.C, USTR added. The Obama Administration canceled the last round of TTIP negotiations, slated for October, due to the government shutdown (see 13100418). Industry leaders pressed comprehensive tariff elimination in a final TTIP pact, along with possible hikes in de minimis levels, during an Oct. 30 Senate Finance Committee hearing (see 13103107). Email ITTNews@warren-news.com for a copy of the USTR release.
The incipient Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations must secure all inclusive tariff elimination between the U.S. and European Union (EU) in a final pact, while making inroads towards regulatory harmonization, Senate and industry leaders on Oct. 30 told a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the trade pact (here). Should the U.S. and EU broker comprehensive tariff elimination, the deal could boost U.S. exports to the EU by a third, adding $100 billion annually in U.S. Gross Domestic Product and creating hundreds of thousands of domestic jobs, said Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., in opening remarks.
The Commerce Department issued the final results of its countervailing duty administrative review on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Turkey (C-489-502). The agency made changes from its preliminary results, and will assess CV duties on entries exported by Toscelik as a result. CV rates for Borusan and Erbosan remain de minimis, so period of review entries exported by those countries will be liquidated without regard to CV duties, and no CV duty cash deposit will be required on future entries from Borusan and Erbosan until further notice. These rates are effective Oct. 30, and will be implemented by CBP soon.
The Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has almost gotten through the licensing backlog caused by the federal government shutdown, said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration Matthew Borman on Oct. 25, speaking at an event hosted by Washington Foreign Law Society. The interagency effort to process applications remained underway during parts of the shutdown and BIS largely polished off the outstanding applications following resolution of the shutdown. “So our folks have said, contrary to what we thought, we don’t really [see] a big bulge that we’re trying to work through,” said Borman. “People think they’re pretty much up to where they would be otherwise.”
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department’s decision to assign Jiangsu Jianghai Chemical an “above de minimis” antidumping duty rate -- but not calculate exactly what that rate may be -- in the original AD duty investigation of 1-Hydroxyethylidene-1, 1-Diphosphonic Acid (HEDP) from China. The Commerce determination came on Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remand, after the appeals court had ruled against the agency’s adverse facts available (AFA) rate for Jiangsu Jianghai despite the company’s cooperation.
CBP issued an interim rule, effective Oct. 23, to amend its regulations for the preferential tariff treatment and other customs-related provisions of the U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement (PATPA or PANTPA). Comments are due by Dec. 23.
The proposed emissions standard for formaldehyde in composite wood products would impose a particularly heavy burden on importers, said the International Wood Products Association (IWPA) in comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (here). Import certification requirements in EPA’s proposed rule would make importers do extra work without any real benefit, and the way compliance dates are structured would require importers to get up to speed faster than their domestic counterparts, IWPA said. For both importers and domestic industry, the differences between EPA’s proposal and the existing California standard would add unnecessary costs, it said. And a de minimis exception is also needed for goods like consumer electronics that may include small amounts of wood, said IWPA and other groups (here).
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security published it's final "CCL clean-up" rule Oct. 4. The final rule makes changes to the Commerce Control List that BIS says will make the CCL clearer, by revising the structure of the Commerce Control List, clarifying definitions, removing ECCNs subject to Nuclear Regulatory Commission jurisdiction, amending shipping tolerances, and conforming the CCL to multilateral export control lists and past amendments to the Export Administration Regulations. It also clarifies two BIS final rules associated with the first move of items from the U.S. Munitions List to the CCL. The final rule makes some changes from BIS' November 2012 proposal (see 12112702).