The European Union said it would “reject any ultimatums” imposed by Iran after the country announced May 8 it is suspending some of its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, effective immediately (see 1905080058). In a May 9 statement, the EU said it has “great concern” over Iran’s demands and “strongly” urged it to “refrain from any escalatory steps,” but also said it disapproves of U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran following U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA.
The Trump administration on May 8 announced an executive order placing sanctions on Iran’s iron, steel, aluminum and copper sectors in what it said are the country’s “largest non-petroleum-related sources of export revenue."
U.S. economic sanctions are on a path toward losing power and impact, potentially undercutting a variety of tools used in U.S. foreign policy, according to a study published April 29 by the Center for a New American Security. The study, “Economic Dominance, Financial Technology, and the Future of U.S. Economic Coercion,” examines the current state of U.S. economic sanctions and makes several predictions, portraying a muddy outlook for the future of U.S. sanctioning tools. “If policymakers want to be able to continue deploying coercive economic tools effectively … they must ... get ahead of trends that could, if left unchecked, weaken some of the most important tools of U.S. foreign policy,” the study said.
The Trump administration will no longer grant exemptions for Iranian oil sanctions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters April 22, a move aimed at sharply reducing Iran’s oil exports and tightening pressure on the country to comply with U.S. demands. The current set of exemption waivers expire in early May, the White House said in a statement.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for April 8-12 in case they were missed.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced two settlements worth almost a combined $500,000 involving a United Kingdom-based oil and gas service provider, its subsidiaries and a New York-based global investment firm for violations of U.S.-imposed sanctions on Cuba and Iran.
Treasury’s March settlement with Stanley Black & Decker serves as a compliance guide for U.S. companies and represents an important peek into how the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control plans to issue enforcement settlements throughout 2019, according to an April 1 report by WilmerHale.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for March 25-29 in case they were missed.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced a $1.9 million settlement with a Connecticut-based industrial tool manufacturer and its China-based subsidiary after OFAC said the companies violated U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran, according to a March 27 notice. The U.S. company -- Stanley Black & Decker -- and the Chinese subsidiary -- Jiangsu Guoqiang Tools Co. (GQ) -- attempted to export 23 “shipments of power tools and spare parts” worth more than $3 million to Iran from mid-2013 to the end of 2014, OFAC said.
The U.S. plans to increase sanctions on Iran by targeting certain foreign entities doing business with the country, potentially creating more compliance issues for American companies, according to Steven Brotherton, principal at KPMG. Speaking at a KPMG export controls information event, Brotherton said he was told in a recent meeting with an official from the Department of State’s Counter Threat Finance and Sanctions sector that the U.S. administration will be doing “a number of things to really ratchet up the sanctions on Iran.”