Global Trade & Foreign Policy Insights

As anticipated, on Saturday, February 1, 2025, President Trump signed three executive orders imposing a 25% ad valorem rate of duty on Canadian and Mexican products; and a 10% rate of duty on Chinese products. 

On January 27th, President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on U.S. imports of copper and aluminum (metals needed for U.S. military hardware production), as well as steel.

On January 26, 2025, a feud between the United States and Colombia began pertaining to U.S. military flights carrying deportees to Colombia. After initially providing approval for the two aircraft to land in Colombia, Colombian President Gustavo Petro blocked their landing. According to his multiple social media posts, he explained that he was objecting to the use of military planes as opposed to commercial airlines to deport the migrants. In response, President Trump posted on social media that his administration will institute a number of actions against Colombia.

The 1984 Supreme Court decision in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. established the ‘Chevron deference’ doctrine, which required courts to defer to administrative agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes if they were reasonable. This doctrine significantly impacted the financial services sector, making it difficult to challenge the US Department of the Treasury's actions, such as sanctions and penalties. 

On January 20th, President Trump issued a memorandum titled the America First Trade Policy to the Secretaries of State, the Treasury, Defense, Commerce, Homeland Security, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Trade Representative, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and the Senior Counselor of Trade and Manufacturing. 

Following his inauguration on Monday, January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump held off on issuing an executive order instituting additional tariffs of any form.

Since well before the November 6 election, President-elect Trump and his team have been discussing the imposition of tariffs on certain trade partners. The scope of possibilities range from all imports being subject to a 10% to 20% additional tariff, to the imposition of a 60% tariff on imports from China, to tariffs on vehicles from Mexico reaching as high as 100% to 200%.

On October 9, 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a six-page guidance statement to financial institutions about best practices under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). 

On September 11, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security published a proposed rule in the Federal Register that would require quarterly reporting by organizations, companies, and corporations organized in the U.S. (including branches outside the U.S.) if they plan to either engage in artificial intelligence model training or acquire, develop, or otherwise possess a high-performance computing cluster for AI training. 

On June 21, 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s (Treasury) Office of Investment Security released proposed language for the Outbound Investment Security Program (hereafter, the Proposed Rule).

China recently enacted a revision to the PRC Law on Guarding State Secrets, and shortly after Hong Kong followed suit when it passed the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.

As a resource to our clients, our global team—which includes attorneys resident in China—has designed a mini-series of presentation recordings outlining recent international trade updates between the U.S. and China in key areas. 

On May 20, 2024, the PRC Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced the inclusion of three U.S. companies on its unreliable entities list over sales of arms to Taiwan. We discussed the implementation of the Unreliable Entity List here. The move mimics similar designations in February 2023, which we wrote about here, and follows recent actions by the BIS and Treasury to apply new export controls and sanctions on Chinese entities for allegedly doing business with Russia.

On February 28, President Biden issued a major new executive order. The E.O. directs the Attorney General to issue regulations within 180 days that prohibit or restrict U.S. persons from engaging in transactions with “countries of concern” involving the transfer of Americans’ bulk sensitive data or U.S. government-related data. 

2024 is already shaping up to be a big year on the national security front. In less than two months, there have already been several notable national security developments.

On September 30, 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) published a rule (the Final Rule) implementing the beneficial ownership information reporting requirements of the Corporate Transparency Act (the CTA).

It’s been another big year on the national security front. The Biden administration finally published its long-awaited Executive Order (E.O.) restricting U.S. investors from making investments in Chinese companies working on certain technologies and products. Evidence is mounting that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS or the Committee) is taking longer than ever to process transactions and, even when foreign investors can avoid CFIUS review, local communities are starting to fill the gaps in CFIUS’s authorities by making certain investments untenable. Finally, the Department of Energy (DOE) issued proposed guidance on its interpretation of “foreign entity of concern” (FEOC), a term that is becoming popular in national security-related statutes and regulatory frameworks.

On December 4, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published its proposed interpretation of the statutory definition of “foreign entity of concern” (FEOC) in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, commonly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL).

Financial institutions have long asked how—and to what extent—they need to comply with export controls, and recently, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) have started to respond.