The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, signed into law on December 23, 2020, represents one of the most sweeping attempts by the United States to address allegations of forced labor in global supply chains, particularly those linked to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Act places a heavy burden on companies, especially in sectors like […]
The passage of Canada’s Bill C-15, more formally known as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, marked a significant shift in how natural resource firms must navigate supply chain operations. After its Royal Assent in June 2020, the legislative framework began reshaping expectations for corporate conduct in regions intersecting with […]
The International Trade Council is pleased to announce the signing of the UK-Japan Free Trade Agreement, which marks the United Kingdom’s first major trade pact after Brexit. The deal is expected to strengthen the trade relationship between the two nations, bringing significant benefits to both countries. Under the agreement, nearly all exports from the […]
The passage of Australia’s Modern Slavery Act in 2018 prompted significant reflection across multiple sectors, but it wasn’t until the first reporting cycles in 2019 that the scale of the challenge became truly clear. Mining firms, manufacturers, retailers—each began grappling, in varying degrees of seriousness, with the Act’s reporting requirements. Yet, for all the initial […]
When the European Green Deal was formally adopted in July 2020, it marked not just another high-level policy framework, but what many saw as a decisive shift in the EU’s climate and industrial strategies. In the months that followed, as the Green Deal Work Programme took shape, attention turned rapidly to implementation mechanisms—where lofty ambitions […]
International Trade Council welcomes the decision of the United States to drop the proposed 10% tariff on certain types of Canadian aluminum. The tariff was announced by President Donald Trump just last month, citing a flood of under-priced metal into the country. After determining that imports were likely to decline after an earlier surge, the […]
The U.K. Companies (Miscellaneous Reporting) Regulations 2018, which came into force in September 2019, represented what many policymakers considered a significant, if somewhat understated, step toward greater corporate transparency. While not as headline-grabbing as some of the government’s other corporate governance reforms, these regulations introduced a key requirement: that beneficial ownership information (BOI) for companies […]
When the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2020 was signed into law in December 2019, the broader public attention largely fell on its topline budget allocations and headline procurement programs. Yet beneath these more conspicuous elements, the legislation embedded provisions that arguably carried equal—if not greater—long-term significance for federal contractors. Among […]
The International Trade Council (ITC) welcomes the news that the European Union has agreed to eliminate tariffs on US lobster, a key priority of President Donald Trump, in exchange for the US halving import taxes on some $160m worth of European goods, including cigarette lighters and certain crystal glassware. The agreement is the first tariff […]
The Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act (ESTMA), in force since 2015, has by now become a familiar fixture in the compliance landscape of Canada’s mining, oil, and gas industries. But if the legislation’s first years were marked by firms simply finding their feet with its basic requirements, 2020 brought a noticeable shift in both tone […]
The International Trade Council announces that the European Union has formally adjusted its trade relationship with Cambodia, moving away from its preferential trade programme, the Everything but Arms (EBA) agreement. The decision, resulting from Cambodia’s persisting systemic human rights violations, reinstates custom duties on a significant proportion of Cambodia’s exports to the EU. Under the […]
The U.K. Environment Bill’s interruption in 2019 left many manufacturers and policymakers in a curious state of limbo. When the Bill was prorogued in September of that year, expectations had already been set. Draft texts, consultations, and government statements had outlined what was to come. The broad strokes of the anticipated waste and resource-efficiency provisions […]
The International Trade Council (ITC) is concerned by the decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to strike down the EU-US Privacy Shield, which governed the transfer of EU citizens’ data to the United States. The ITC recognizes the potential negative consequences of this decision on transatlantic trade worth $7.1 trillion ( £5.6tn), and […]
When Canada’s federal government launched its consultation on the proposed Modern Slavery Act in January 2020, few expected the volume—or the complexity—of feedback that would pour in from corporate actors, industry groups, and civil society. The submissions portal, opened with the goal of soliciting practical views on due-diligence thresholds and reporting requirements, quickly became a […]
The June 2020 adoption of the EU Taxonomy Delegated Acts marked a subtle but decisive shift in how biodiversity considerations are expected to integrate into supply-chain management across sectors. For many agribusinesses in particular, this new regulatory architecture introduces complexities that go beyond carbon footprints or energy efficiency metrics. The biodiversity objective now requires firms […]
The imposition of Section 301 Phase 3 tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, which took effect in September 2019, triggered what can only be described as one of the most dramatic—and, in some cases, hasty—supply chain reconfigurations in recent history. Electronics manufacturers and apparel brands, already grappling with thin margins and competitive pressures, […]