China is responding to its ongoing tension with the US and EU in some surprising ways – including setting up manufacturing and distribution hubs in Mexico and increasing its involvement in Latin America. What does this have to do with your business? More than you think.
The shift away from the unipolar and free trade-oriented world of the 1990s and early 2000s to the peer competition-driven managed trade and industrial policies of today has resulted in an increasingly restrictive and protected U.S. import environment.
The significantly stepped-up enforcement activity that characterizes this trend has, in turn, increased compliance risk for U.S. importers. This post will attempt to help U.S. importers mitigate some of that compliance risk through a set of up-to-date import practice tips.
Citing the ongoing genocide, crimes against humanity, and other human rights abuses committed by the People’s Republic of China (China) against ethnic and religious minority groups in the western part of the country, Congress acted to strengthen CBP’s ability to enforce the forced labor prohibitions set forth in Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 by enacting the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA) on 23 December 2021. To this end, the UFLPA applies a presumption that goods produced/manufactured (either wholly or in part) or mined in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) or by entities designated on the UFLPA Entity List are made with forced labor and prohibited from entering the U.S.
US-China decoupling is accelerating and inevitable. It will be gradual and then sudden. Now is the time for your company to prepare for this.
U.S. companies importing goods from Southeast Asia must beware of transshipment schemes by Chinese suppliers. Not only do these schemes mean dealing with China problems after a supposed China departure, they also give rise to serious liabilities if importing into the United States. Over the past few years, companies have had plenty of reasons to
Sourcing product from China just got even riskier. Theses risks have never been higher and they just keep increasing. The Russian war and COVID in China are the key causes for this increased risk and both are nearly certain to get far worse.
Russia’s war will impact your China business. We live in an interconnected world and what is happening with Ukraine will impact doing business with China. It’s just a question of how and by how much. In this post and in its follow-up post, I will discuss how Russia’s war against Ukraine is likely to impact doing business in and with China and what you can do to try to minimize that impact.
China-Latam ties are growing. This is an important development for businesses, and not just those in China and Latin America. For businesses in the United States and most of the global north, China presents a conundrum. The lure of its vast markets remains strong, and for many companies it remains the go-to location for manufacturing or sourcing their products.
At the same time, there’s increasing concern at home about China’s behavior. If it was “just” a matter of human rights violations, there might be less concern overall with possible spill-on effects. However, there’s also a—not unjustified—feeling that China has unfairly muscled its way to economic dominance. As a result, companies must walk a fine line as they seek the benefits of China engagement, in order to placate increasingly frustrated customers at home.
But things are different in the global south.
The year 2021 began with high hopes for international trade as many thought the incoming Biden Administration would undo many of the unprecedented trade actions taken by the Trump Administration and reset U.S. trade policy. However, at the end of 2021, most of the Trump tariffs remain in effect and the Biden Administration has largely pushed trade issues to the back burner. Here, we take a look at some of developments on the Trump tariffs this past year and what to expect for those tariffs in 2022.
Omicron is incredibly contagious and China is not well-equipped to slow it down to the same extent it has done with previous COVID variants. Omicron will likely lead to shutdowns of China’s factories and convince more foreign product buying companies to diversify out of China.
