The House Ways and Means Committee, with near-unanimity, recommended the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement go to the floor. A vote on the replacement for NAFTA is expected on Dec. 19. For about three hours, Democrats and Republicans praised the rewrite of North America's free trade pact, though many Republicans complained that it took a year to get the opportunity to vote for it.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is expected to increase enforcement of its 50 percent rule, placing more of a burden on companies to determine whether they are indirectly dealing with a sanctioned party, said Joshua Shrager, a former Treasury official and a senior specialist with Kharon, a sanctions advisory firm. While the 50 percent rule -- which bans transactions with a company owned 50 percent or more by a sanctioned party -- is growing increasingly complicated due to a rise in U.S. sanctions, OFAC’s compliance expectations are rising too, Shrager said.

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., for a second time announced he will block the Trump administration’s efforts to transfer export controls of firearms from the State Department to the Commerce Department, according to a Dec. 13 press release. In a Dec. 10 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Menendez said the military items should not be removed from the State Department’s U.S. Munitions List and should instead be subject to “more rigorous controls” and oversight. The senator previously announced a hold on the transfer in February (see 1903060021).

The Commerce Department plans to release its first set of proposed controls on emerging technologies in six areas, including the semiconductor and artificial intelligence sectors, a top Commerce official said. The six proposed rules (see 1912130055), which may not be released until early next year, include restrictions on items in the fields of quantum technology, semiconductor design, chemicals, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and possibly 3D printing, said Matt Borman, Commerce’s deputy assistant secretary for export administration. The controls stem from an advance notice of proposed rulemaking published more than a year ago.

With the last round of consumer goods imported from China spared, and a reduction in Section 301 tariffs on about $120 billion in goods that were first subject to additional tariffs Sept. 1, some business interests welcomed the de-escalation, but warned that the U.S. should stay focused on more significant economic reforms in China. The tariffs on List 4a, which are at 15 percent and apply to about 3,800 8-digit tariff lines, will go to 7.5 percent.

BOSTON -- The Commerce Department is preparing six initial proposed rules to control exports of emerging technologies and hopes to release at least one before the end of the year, said Karen Nies-Vogel, the director of the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Office of Exporter Services, speaking during a Dec. 13 event hosted by the Massachusetts Export Center. A Commerce official said during a technical advisory committee meeting earlier this month that the agency is working on at least three rules (see 1912100019). While Commerce officials have said the technologies would be published this year (see 1910290062), delays have caused the publication to be pushed back.

BOSTON -- If the Commerce Department follows through on plans to expand the limits of the Export Administration Regulations to further control foreign shipments to Huawei, it will have a “dramatic” impact on international supply chains, said Kevin Wolf, a trade lawyer with Akin Gump and Commerce’s former assistant secretary for export administration. The measures, which Commerce confirmed it was considering earlier this month (see 1912100033), include expanding the Direct Product Rule and broadening the de minimis rule to make more foreign-made goods subject to the EAR.

About a year into the Trump administration's maximum pressure sanctions campaign on Iran, the effort has done nothing to bring Iran to the negotiating table, panelists said during a Dec. 12 Atlantic Council event. U.S. sanctions have instead emboldened a more aggressive Iran, panelists said, which is growing increasingly frustrated with its unwilling European trade partners and will likely continue breaching the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The European Union is proposing to amend its rules on tariff retaliation so it can still impose tariffs and other restrictions after the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement appellate body ceased to function on Dec. 11, the EU Commission said in a press release.

The Chinese “irreversibly accelerated” their Made in China 2025 industrial program since the summer, taking a sharp protectionist turn as the U.S.-China trade war persisted with no negotiated breakthrough, Photronics CEO Peter Kirlin said on a fiscal Q4 call Dec. 11. “They ain't turning back,” said Kirlin, whose company drew more than half its Q4 revenue from the photomasks it supplied Chinese panel makers, produced at Photronics factories throughout Asia, including in Xiamen and Hefei, China.