Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Feb. 3-7 in case you missed them.

U.S.-China Business Council members are in “crisis mode” as China continues to battle the coronavirus outbreak, which has caused disruptions in supply chains and hurt earnings, a USCBC spokesman said. While it is too early to predict how much of a sustained impact the virus will have on global trade, the USCBC is confident trade and business with China will normalize. “Everyone I’ve spoken with fully expects life to return to normal,” USCBC spokesman Doug Barry said in an email, “but for now are taking one day at a time.”

The Treasury released its 2020 National Illicit Finance Strategy on Feb. 6, detailing a “roadmap to modernize” its regimes for anti-money laundering regimes countering terrorism financing, the agency said. In the report, Treasury said money launderers and terrorist financers often try to evade U.S. sanctions and export controls on dual-use items, frequently trying to procure controlled U.S.-origin goods and technology.

The United Kingdom's Secretary of State of International Trade, Elizabeth Truss, told Parliament that the price the National Health Service pays for prescription drugs is not up for negotiation in free trade deals, and “we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards.” She also added, according to her written statement, that “The UK will maintain its own autonomous sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regime to protect public, animal and plant life and health and the environment, reflecting its existing high standards.”

U.S. and global companies should not be concerned about other European Union member states withdrawing from the EU in the near future, trade experts said. A lengthy and complicated Brexit became a source of division within the United Kingdom, the experts said, which should serve as a deterrent for other EU member states that may have considered leaving the EU.

The U.S and Kenya will begin negotiating a comprehensive trade deal that both sides believe will act as a model for more agreements between the U.S. and other African countries, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Feb. 6. Kenya hopes to conclude negotiations quickly, its President Uhuru Kenyatta said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, adding that the country prefers a long-term agreement that will provide U.S. and Kenyan companies with “predictable terms of engagement” in the fields of agriculture, manufacturing, energy and more. Discussions on a framework for the negotiations will begin in the “next few days,” Kenyatta said.

China’s Ministry of Finance said it will halve retaliatory tariffs on $75 billion worth of U.S. imports beginning Feb. 14, according to an unofficial translation of a Feb. 5 news release. Tariffs on some U.S. goods will fall from 10 percent to 5 percent, China said, while others will drop from 5 percent to 2.5 percent. The tariffs stem from China’s Sept. 1 tranche of retaliatory tariffs (see 1909030055).

The legislative process for U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement approval “has just started in Canada” and the final ratification is expected to occur in March, said Joy Nott, a partner in KPMG's Canada Indirect Tax Practice, during a Feb. 5 webinar. “If it does happen at any point in the month of March,” the agreement would then come into force in July (see 2001300009), she said. “The one thing that is sort of up in the air is -- in Canada, it goes through a debate period, and we're not expecting any undue delays or whatever else, but like all politics, there is a debate period that as long as the debate is going on, it could drag the ratification into April,” she said. Still, ratification in March seems likely, she said.

Trump administration officials will meet this month in an attempt to resolve differences in the matter of restricting technology exports to China and Huawei, according to a Feb. 4 Reuters report. But Commerce is also discussing expanding its export control jurisdiction to a broader array of foreign sales containing U.S. goods that go beyond exports to just Huawei, according to a person familiar with the situation. “That is the one that would be a nuclear bomb for business,” the person said, adding that Commerce is discussing expanding its export control jurisdiction to “the maximum possible point.”

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Jan. 27-31 in case you missed them.