The U.S. and Turkey created sectoral committees to reach the two sides’ $100 billion trade goal, the two countries said at a Sept. 10 press conference. The committees will help with the goal -- initially announced by President Donald Trump during his June G-20 meeting with Turkey -- by bringing together Turkish and American business circles to promote trade, according to a report from the Daily Sabah. The committees will be run by the two countries' trade ministries, the report said.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Sept. 10 that “strengthens and expands” the State and Treasury departments' sanctions authorities against terrorists, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a notice. Among several changes, the order allows the U.S. to impose “correspondent account or payable-through account sanctions” on foreign banks that “knowingly conducted or facilitated any significant transaction” for a U.S. sanctioned global terrorist, OFAC said.
A Turkish businessman was sentenced to just more than two years in prison following his conviction for conspiring to illegally export marine equipment from the U.S. to Iran, the Justice Department said in a Sept. 3 press release. Resit Tavan, owner of Istanbul-based Ramor Dis Ticaret, tried to export “specialized” equipment, including outboard engines, marine power generators and power boat propulsion equipment known as “surface drives,” the press release said.
Commerce revoked export privileges for Sammy Smith, who was convicted in 2018 of violating the Export Control Act after trying to illegally export firearms components from the U.S. to Turkey, Commerce said in an Aug. 30 notice. Smith tried to export several items on the U.S. Munitions List, including “glock pistol upper receivers, barrels and recoil springs, Lone Wolf pistol upper receivers with matching barrels and a Beretta PX4 pistol short barrel,” Commerce said. Smith was sentenced to two months in prison, six months of supervised release and a $100 fine, the notice said. Commerce revoked Smith’s export privileges for seven years dating from his July 9, 2018, conviction.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is soliciting comments at regulations.gov, docket number USTR-2019-0012, on tariff and non-tariff barriers in 61 countries, the European Union and the countries of the Arab League (some of which are included in the list that follows). The topics stakeholders can comment on are wide-ranging -- from tariffs, customs practices, and sanitary and phytosanitary measures not based on science, to subsidies, intellectual property enforcement, data localization, discriminatory licensing or regulatory actions and investment restrictions. They also asked about Buy America-equivalent policies in other markets. The countries under review for the annual trade barriers report are: Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Kuwait, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine and Vietnam. Comments are due by midnight Oct. 31.
An Iranian citizen pleaded guilty to illegally exporting carbon fiber from the U.S. to Iran, the Justice Department said in an Aug. 29 press release. Behzad Pourghannad faces a maximum 20-year prison sentence for violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
In the Aug. 1-6 editions of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
The Trump administration has “done virtually nothing to support exports,” failing to open new foreign markets for U.S. sellers while also tightening export controls, according to an Aug. 2 report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. At the same time, U.S. export growth has “dropped sharply,” the report said. “Unless the president reverses course, his trade policy will continue to weaken rather than strengthen the US economy as well as undermine the global trading system,” the report said.
President Donald Trump on July 26 directed the U.S. trade representative to seek changes at the World Trade Organization that would prevent rich countries from claiming benefits reserved for developing countries in WTO agreements.
Of the 10 Congress members who traveled to Mexico last weekend to evaluate the NAFTA rewrite as part of a congressional delegation, one was already planning to vote for the deal, others were leaning yes, and some others have always opposed free trade deals. For some of those who were leaning yes, their conversations with government officials and institutions that tackle environmental problems near the border moved them closer to voting yes. For others who were already skeptical, they returned even more skeptical.