A U.S. official again argued that the U.S. has the authority to invoke snapback sanctions under the Iran nuclear deal and threatened to impose them unless an international arms embargo against Iran is extended. Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran, said the U.S. will trigger a United Nations provision to reimpose a host of international sanctions against Iran if the arms embargo, set to expire in October, is not extended. Without the embargo, Iran could import a range of advanced military weapons from China and Russia, Hook said. “One way or another, we're going to accomplish this,” he said, speaking during a June 9 virtual talk hosted by the Heritage Foundation.

A foreign investment review bill being considered by the United Kingdom will significantly expand the number of transactions subject to reviews and create greater due diligence requirements for U.K. companies, trade lawyers said. As more countries aim to increase their foreign investment screening, particularly the U.S. (see 2005200032), the U.K. is hoping to better protect its industry from trade theft and national security threats, the lawyers said.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on June 5 issued a series of frequently asked questions to clarify a January executive order that expanded U.S. sanctions authority against Iran (see 2001100050). The FAQs clarified that the U.S. will not target Iranian medical manufacturers, defined the sectors of Iran’s economy referenced in the order and specified which goods and services may be targeted. Before this guidance, the agency had done little to define the broad scope of the order, which was causing confusion about the reach of the authorities and the Iranian sectors that would be subject to expanded sanctions (see 2001170034).

The Justice Department released an updated compliance program guidance urging industry to rely more on data, learn from past compliance penalties and improve compliance training. But the guidance, issued June 1, also introduces a “subtle” shift in how prosecutors will assess compliance programs, law firms said: More of an emphasis will be placed on determining whether programs are built to adapt to new compliance risks or whether they only rely on bare minimum measures.

U.S. lawmakers and sanctions experts said the administration should move faster to impose sanctions on China for interference in Hong Kong and increase export controls on critical technologies and crowd control equipment. Democratic and Republican senators said they would back a bill introduced in the Senate this week that would sanction Chinese officials and foreign banks, while experts called for a focused, multilateral sanctions approach to minimize impacts on Hong Kong citizens and U.S. companies.

Reports that China would be slowing or stopping its purchases of soybeans because of U.S. action over Hong Kong (see 2006010044) are inaccurate, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said. Lighthizer, who was speaking to the Economic Club of New York, Washington and Chicago by video on June 4, said China made $185 million worth of U.S. soybean purchases since that story was published. He said that coverage of the trade agreement frequently focuses on the purchase promises and neglects the structural reforms that were pledged, but that both tracks have been going well in the three months since the deal went into effect. “You’ll know what the score is before too long,” he said.

The president of the American Automotive Policy Council, former Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, said the release of the uniform regulations in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement was so recent that it's too early “to give a definitive view of what needs to be clarified,” or is missing. But he said one of the really important asks of the automotive industry was granted -- an acknowledgement that importers and exporters would need the rest of the year to be ready for full compliance.

The Commerce Department plans to issue an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to remove certain filing requirements for exporters shipping goods to Puerto Rico, said Kiesha Downs, chief of the Foreign Trade Division’s regulations branch at the Census Bureau. The rule is under review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and is expected to be published this year, Downs said during a June 2 Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting.

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security will officially add 33 companies and government agencies to the Entity List on June 5 for their roles in aiding proliferation activities and human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang province, BIS said in two Federal Register notices. The notices formalize the additions, which were announced in May (see 2005220058).

Commerce Department officials will hold discussions with the Office of the General Counsel June 3 to try to make progress on the agency’s long-awaited proposed rules on routed export transactions, said Kiesha Downs, chief of the Census Bureau Foreign Trade Division’s regulations branch. The discussions will include OGC’s Office of the Chief Counsel and officials from both Census and the Bureau of Industry and Security as the two agencies try to build on a meeting in March (see 2003100046).