[co-authors: Justin Holbein, Victoria Schneider]
We can all agree that goods made from forced labor, indentured labor or child labor should not be introduced into the U.S. market. Indeed, U.S. law prohibits the entry of goods made from forced labor. The
Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (“UFLPA”) which went into effect as of June 21, 2022, expands on this prohibition by placing a ban on goods from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (“XUAR”) where ethnic minorities are being exploited or certain specified entities that are involved in using forced labor.
This Primer provides introductory guidance to complying with U.S. forced labor laws for importers, and includes an introductory overview to forced labor laws, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) authority to enforce forced labor laws, outlines importer requirements under The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, describes the detention processes for imported goods made with forced labor, lists key recommended compliance actions for adhering to U.S. forced labor laws, and provides helpful resources for complying with U.S. forced labor laws.
It’s goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, the recent visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi certainly didn’t help the already strained relations much, but within her reasoning for defiance of Beijing, the democracies of the world must stand together. The Chinese Embassy has now threatened to go to war with the U.S. over Taiwan.
In the aftermath of the visit, as I tap the keyboard producing this article 8/6/2022, China will be finishing its theater of shock and awe around the island, including its disruption of trade through the Straits of Taiwan. Of note, 60% of maritime trade passes through Asia, with the South China Sea carrying an estimated one-third of the global shipping.
As Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have exploded into public consciousness, new types of DAOs are proliferating. A novel use case for DAOs, termed “ImpactDAOs”, are defined as “any DAO that creates net positive externalities to the ecosystem around it. An ImpactDAO seeks to use web3 and crypto-economic principles to regenerate a system, increasing resources and sustainability over time. Resources don’t have to be purely financial, as tokenization enabled by smart contracts allows new types of capital to be built on and experimented with.
Calculations by top economists worldwide show that Russia is still accumulating about one billion dollars a day on oil and gas exports to fund the invasion. It does beg the question, who is buying the oil?
Yes, sanctions are having an effect on the Russian economy, but not at the pace that some global economists had predicted. Russia’s revenue stream from fossil fuels, its biggest export by far, climbed to records in the first 100 days of its war on Ukraine, fueled (pardon the pun) by a windfall from oil sales. The NY Times recently reported that Russia earned the equivalent of a record 93 billion euros (or U.S. dollars) in revenue from exports of oil, gas and coal in this same 100 days of the invasion. About two-thirds of the earnings came from oil exports. So, who primarily is buying the cheap 30% discounted oil? Well, that would be China and India.
Some may be familiar with Open General Licenses (OGLs) used in the United Kingdom and some other countries. They allow export of dual-use, strategic and other controlled articles to specific destinations under certain conditions.
On July 20, 2022 the Directorate of Defense Controls (DDTC), which controls exports of defense articles and technical data, announced a pilot program under Part 126.9(b) of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) for OGLs applicable to certain transfers and re-exports. The announcement went further and issued the first two OGLs for specific transactions.
What this means it that certain ITAR-controlled articles and technical data can be transferred, or transmitted, without a license or approval. The first OGLs are OGL1 or OGL2 and were appended to the announcement.
Since the Kremlin’s February 24th invasion of Ukraine, western countries have put in place extensive global financial ramifications. To gauge the extent of effectiveness, one must decipher the numbers behind Russia’s deceiving published economic statistics. One staggering implication of the trade war with the west lies within the entire collapse of the GDP growth acquired in the post-Soviet era. Sanctions have certainly not only impacted the aggregate of the Russian economy, but also the individuals. According to the Yale school of management’s first comprehensive economic analysis published this July, in 2022, by Jeffery Sonnenfeld, based on an in-depth dive on high frequency consumer data, cross channel checks, releases from Russia’s international trade partners, and data mining of complex shipping data, it is evident that: “business retreats and sanctions are catastrophically crippling the Russian economy.”
Most companies that employ non-U.S. persons located in the United States are familiar with visa requirements, including completing the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Form I-129 - Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker. However, many are less familiar or actively comply with the affirmative due diligence and certification requirements contained in Part 6 of the I-129.
If you haven’t heard the words Ukraine or Russia within the last 5 months, one would assume that you must live under a rock, or that you’ve just decided to tune them out. Just as it seemed that we were on our way to being in the clear from the COVID pandemic and getting back to a little bit of normalcy within the global supply chain, the ever-so-sweet Putin decided to invade the Ukraine. Ever since the invasion, initiated by Putin back in February of 2022, there has been a shockwave of domino effects that have reached around the world.
