On July 31, OFAC designated Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro Moros as a “Specially Designated National” (“SDN”) blocking all of his assets and prohibiting any transaction in which he has an interest within U.S. jurisdiction. Last week, on July 26, OFAC designated 13 other current and former Venezuelan officials as SDNs, including Rocco Albisinni Serrano, who is the President of CENCOEX (the Venezuelan foreign exchange authority), and Simon Alejandro Zerpa Delgado, who is the Vice President of Finance for PDVSA and the President of Venezuela’s Economic and Social Development Bank (“BANDES”), and the President of Venezuela’s National Development Fund (“FONDEN”). There have been rumors that the United States was considering restricting oil sales from Venezuela, but at the moment no such sanctions have been imposed.
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U.S. Trade
President Trump Announces Limited Roll-Back of Obama-Era Cuba Sanctions Relief
By Paul Marquardt on
On June 16, 2017, the President released a National Security Presidential Memorandum, which outlines the Trump Administration’s national security and economic policy towards Cuba. The Presidential Directive lays out the framework for rolling back certain Obama-era regulations that eased travel and trade restrictions between the United States and Cuba. The White House has released a fact sheet related to today’s Presidential Directive, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) has released a list of frequently asked questions.
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Anti-Dumping, Non-Market Economy and Chinese Goods – Where Do We Stand in the EU?
Background
Fifteen years ago, China joined the World Trade Organization (“WTO”). To alleviate concerns of cheap Chinese goods flooding international markets at that time, China agreed to allow other WTO members to continue conducting their anti-dumping calculations in a special way, thereby recognizing the concerns of certain members that prices of Chinese goods could be distorted due to state interference. This methodology considered China as a “non-market economy” (“NME”). In a nutshell, this means other countries can disregard Chinese prices or costs, and can use “alternative methods” (external benchmarks, such as hypothetical costs of a third country) to determine the margin of dumping in an investigation. In doing so, authorities will typically end up levying higher anti-dumping duties on Chinese goods.