Finally, the much awaited harmonized screening framework of foreign investments into the EU (Regulation 2017/0224) has been agreed upon on 20 November 2018 by the EU Parliament, the Council and the Commission. The agreed package will ensure that the EU and its Member States are equipped to protect their “essential interests” while remaining “one of the most open investment regimes” in the world. Protecting an open economy may sound like a comical oxymoron, but the…

Key Takeaways: Emerging technology sectors will soon be subject to new export controls. Affected sectors include biotech, computing, artificial intelligence, positioning and navigation, data analytics, additive manufacturing, robotics, brain-machine interface, advanced materials, and surveillance. New export controls on these sectors will likely require companies to obtain a license to export products to China and other destinations, and impose restrictions on sharing information with foreign nationals. These sectors will also be added the list of industries…

The Prohibitions On May 8, 2018, the United States withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and reimposed all pre-JCPOA sanctions against Iran. We provide a detailed discussion of the reimposition in our article linked here (and linked here is our prediction, a year earlier, that it would happen). After a prescribed wind-down period, all U.S. sanctions on Iran are now in force. Effectively, U.S. sanctions on Iran now return to their pre-2016 levels,…

On October 10, 2018, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States put into effect the first mandatory filing requirement ever imposed by CFIUS. The Department of Treasury’s summary of the Pilot Program is available here. Effective November 10, 2018, CFIUS will require reviews of critical technology investments – including certain non-controlling investments – from any country. A failure to file notice or a new short form declaration to CFIUS may result in…

A tripartite agreement to save the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has just been reached. Since June 2017, the United States, Canada, and Mexico have been renegotiating NAFTA. After over a year of negotiations, late on Sunday night, September 30, 2018, Canada agreed to sign the revised agreement. That agreement is called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA.…

On September 4, 2018, the Federal Communications Commission issued a new rule requiring foreign media outlets to submit reports to the FCC disclosing their relationships with foreign principals. The notice was issued pursuant to the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act.[1]…

A double agent. Nerve gas. Violations of international law. The recently imposed sanctions on Russia have all the makings of a James Bond movie but, unfortunately, those sanctions may cause some less-than-entertaining headaches for your business. Why These Sanctions On August 8, the U.S. State Department notified Congress it would impose new sanctions on Russia based on the U.S. Government’s determination that the Russian Government has used chemical and biological weapons in violation of international…