On July 14, 2020, President Trump issued Executive Order 13936 on Hong Kong Normalization (the “Hong Kong Normalization EO”), which directs the suspension or elimination of special and preferential treatment for Hong Kong under a wide range of US laws, setting the stage for Hong Kong to be treated the same as mainland China. It also authorizes sanctions against persons involved in developing, adopting, or implementing China’s Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong…
On July 17, 2020, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) published a request for comments on the letter of attestation process in connection with the export restrictions on certain personal protection equipment (“PPE“). These restrictions were imposed earlier this year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our previous blog posts on the FEMA restrictions and their exemptions can be found here and here. FEMA requires that exporters submit a letter of attestation via a document management system overseen by US…
On June 15, 2020, the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) published an interim final rule (“Interim Final Rule”) effective on June 18, 2020 to authorize the limited release of certain items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to Huawei and its affiliates listed on the BIS Entity List (“Huawei Listed Entities”) in the context of international efforts to develop technical standards for 5G and other new technologies. In a statement, the Commerce…
We are pleased to announce the launch of Baker McKenzie’s COVID-19 Product Import/Export Review (“COVID-19 PIER”) tool. This tool is a multijurisdictional tracker that provides information on import and export measures imposed around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. New jurisdictions will be added as we continuously update the information in the tool. The past few months have seen an exponential increase in the demand for personal protective equipment (“PPE”), medical supplies, and other…