Crowell & Moring has issued its seventh-annual “Litigation Forecast 2019: What Corporate Counsel Need to Know for the Coming Year.” The story focusing on international trade, “Big Questions For The CIT,” provides a concise summary on how the Trump administration’s aggressive trade policy has dramatically increased the scope and scale of litigation at the Court of International Trade (CIT). In addition, the Forecast also explores trends in #MeToo litigation, consumer protection,…

Earlier this week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection posted a notice on Section 301 Product Exclusions announced on December 28, 2018. The notice provided the following guidance regarding exclusions granted by USTR: On December 28, 2018, the U.S. Trade Representative published Federal Register Notice 83 FR 67463 announcing the decision to grant certain exclusion requests from the 25% duty assessed on goods of China with an annual trade value of approximately $34 billion (Tranche 1),…

  The USTR published a Federal Register Notice announcing its yearly “special review” to identify countries that deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) or deny fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons who rely on intellectual property protection under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Section 301).  Based on this review, the USTR will determine whether to identify “Priority Foreign Countries” defined under Section 182 of the Trade…

On December 28, 2018, USTR published in the Federal Register the first Section 301 List 1 Product Exclusions. The exclusions apply as of the July 6, 2018 effective date of “List 1,” and will extend for one year after the publication of this notice. U.S. Customs and Border Protection will issue instructions on entry guidance and implementation. Please see our earlier blog post discussing the details of this notice, as it was announced…

On December 21, 2018 USTR submitted for publication a Federal Register Notice with the first list of products excluded from Section 301 Tariffs on certain products from China. The Products were originally published on the USTR’s “List 1” which included $34 Billion worth of imports from China. The USTR granted 984 individual exclusion requests involving 21 separate HTS codes. An index of all “List 1” exclusion requests and their status in the review process was…

On December 20, 2018, President Trump signed into law the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act (NICA Act). The sanctions listed in the NICA Act are additional and would be complementary to the current sanctions that have already been imposed on Nicaragua by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The NICA Act aims to block any loan that could be issued by international financial institutions that could benefit the current Government of Nicaragua…

On December 3, 2018, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the National Credit Union Administration, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (together “the agencies”), issued a joint statement encouraging banks to test and implement innovative approaches to meeting their Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) obligations. The agencies hope to harness private sector innovation to better protect the financial…