In the midst of the COVID-19 situation in Thailand, a new Ministerial Regulation (Ministerial Regulation (No. 2) B.E. 2564 (2021)) sets a temporary measure during the period of 1 June to 30 September 2021 to reduce the duty surcharge rate to 0.25% per month for all importers and exporters who voluntarily disclose their errors by themselves and pay additional duty to Thai Customs. Under Customs Act, B.E. 2560 (2017), importers or exporters who fail to…
On June 2, 2021, United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai announced the conclusion of the one-year Section 301 investigations of Digital Service Taxes (DSTs) adopted by Austria, India, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The final determination in those investigations is to impose additional tariffs of 25% on certain goods (specified in Annex A to each notice) from these countries, while suspending the tariffs for up to 180 days to provide additional time…
On 17 May 2021, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued an additional round of sanctions pursuant to Executive Order 14014 “Blocking Property with Respect to the Situation in Burma” (“EO 14014”). It designates and adds the State Administrative Council (SAC), four individual members of the SAC, seven SAC-appointed ministers, the SAC-appointed governor of the Central Bank of Myanmar (CBM), the SAC-appointed chairman of the Union Election Commission and…
The scope of the two Open General Export Licences (OGEL) for security items has been further refined and amendments to the OGELs were on Wednesday (26 May 2021) published by the Department for International Trade in a Notice to Exporters. The updated OGELs permit the export of low risk information security items that rely on encryption technologies listed in Schedule 1 to each OGEL. The new Information Security OGELs cover a significantly wider range of items than the…
On May 18, 2021, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued General License 1B, “Authorizing Transactions Involving Securities of Certain Communist Chinese Military Companies,” (“GL 1B”) in relation to OFAC’s Communist Chinese Military Companies (CCMCs) sanctions program as implemented pursuant to Executive Order 13959 (EO 13959) and amended by Executive Order 13974. Our blog posts on EO 13959 and OFAC’s prior guidance on the CCMC sanctions program are available here and here. As with the original…
On May 27, 2021 the Department of State published in the Federal Register a proposed rule [Public Notice: 11406] that would update the definition of regular employee in section 120.39 of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to allow subject persons to work remotely, and to clarify the contractual relationships that meet the definition of regular employee. Comments are due on or before July 26, 2021.
News in brief Foreign Internet sites, web-pages, information systems and programs aimed at Russian audiences may be required to open local offices in accordance with a draft law being considered by the Russian parliament.The new rules (contained in a draft law that was presented to the State Duma on 21 May 2021) will apply to foreign companies or individuals if their daily audience in Russia is more than 500 thousand users, provided they meet one of…
On 16 May 2021, the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council (CTC) issued Circular [2021] No. 5 to extend the effective period for the second product exclusion list for the second batch of US products subject to Chinese retaliatory tariffs from 19 May 2021 to 25 December 2021. Click here to see the announcement. The exclusion list covers 79 products in total, including certain industrial chemicals, textiles, metals, electric…
On May 26, 2021, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will publish in the Federal Register a document [CBP Dec. 21-09] announcing the quota quantity of tuna in airtight containers for Calendar Year (CY) 2021. Each year, the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) for tuna described in subheading 1604.14.22, Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS), is calculated as a percentage of the tuna in airtight containers entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption during the…
On May 25, 2021, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) published in the Federal Register a document [Docket No. USCBP–2021–0009; CBP Dec. 21–04] that reopens the comment period for the interim final rule published on March 15, 2021 which amends the CBP regulations to provide for mandatory advance electronic data (AED) for international mail shipments. Although the comment period for this IFR closed on May 14, 2021, CBP has decided to reopen the comment period…