Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 11 December 2025 the US Department of State announced the inaugural Pax Silica Summit, held in Washington D.C. on 12 December 2025, at which the United States, Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Israel signed the non-binding Pax Silica Declaration. The declaration commits signatories to coordinate "trusted" supply chains across the full technology stack — software, frontier foundation models, network infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, transportation logistics, minerals refining and processing, and energy — explicitly to reduce "coercive dependencies." The coalition has since expanded to add the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Qatar, Sweden and India (signed 20 February 2026 at the India AI Impact Summit), and on 26 March 2026 State announced a USD 250 million Pax Silica Fund intended to catalyse trusted-capital co-investment in critical-minerals processing and semiconductor supply chains.

On 27 July 2025, President Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reached political agreement at Turnberry, Scotland, on a Framework Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair and Balanced Trade. The framework was formalised in a Joint Statement published on 21 August 2025 by the White House and DG TRADE. The deal establishes a 15% all-inclusive (MFN + Section 232) US tariff ceiling on the vast majority of EU originating goods — including autos, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, lumber, and chemicals — replacing the threatened 20-30% reciprocal tariff trajectory under EO 14257 (April 2025). Steel and aluminium are excluded from the 15% ceiling and remain at the 50% Section 232 rate pending negotiation of a quota solution. In return, the EU commits to: (i) eliminate tariffs on all US industrial goods, (ii) preferential market access for a wide range of US agricultural and seafood products, (iii) suspension of its rebalancing countermeasures under Reg 2025/778 (suspension effective 7 August 2025), (iv) expected energy offtake of $750bn (LNG, oil, nuclear) through 2028, (v) at least $40bn in US AI chip purchases, and (vi) facilitation of $600bn in additional EU corporate investment into the US through 2028. Effective from 1 September 2025, the US applies MFN-only treatment (no 15% top-up) to: aircraft and parts, generic pharmaceuticals and ingredients, chemical precursors, cork, and certain unavailable natural resources. The framework is not legally binding but anchors the bilateral architecture; it is the largest-economy ART-programme deal alongside US-UK, US-Japan, US-Korea, US-Taiwan, and US-Indonesia.

Greece enacted Law 5202/2025 on 22 May 2025, published in Government Gazette ΦΕΚ A' 84 on 23 May 2025 and effective the same day, establishing the country's first national mandatory and suspensory foreign direct investment screening mechanism, aligned with Regulation (EU) 2019/452. The Interministerial Committee for the Control of Foreign Direct Investment (ICC-FDI), with initial procedure run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reviews non-EU acquisitions in "sensitive" sectors (energy, transportation, healthcare, ICT, digital infrastructure) and "particularly sensitive" sectors (national security, defence, cybersecurity, AI, ports and critical subsea infrastructure, borderland tourism). A two-phase review applies — 30 days Phase I, up to 150 days Phase II with EU Cooperation Mechanism notification — and the regime became fully operational on 11 November 2025.

Greece enacted Law 5164/2024, published in Government Gazette ΦΕΚ A' 202 on 12 December 2024, amending the Strategic Investments framework of Law 4864/2021 to create a new "Flagship Investments" sub-category with a 45-day strategic-approval procedure, up to 12-year income-tax stabilisation, cash grants, accelerated depreciation, and location-based incentives. Eligible projects explicitly include the production, extraction, refining and processing of EU-designated critical and strategic raw materials (aluminium, lithium, gallium, germanium per Regulation (EU) 2024/1252), circular-economy investments (reuse, repair, recycling), and the shipbuilding and maritime industry. The law is Greece's first foundational statutory alignment to the EU Critical Raw Materials Act and re-anchors Greek industrial-policy architecture to allied CRM and strategic-autonomy objectives.

Bureau of Industry and Security final rule (88 FR 46071, Doc 2023-15343) adding four entities to the Entity List effective July 18, 2023. Intellexa S.A. (Greece) and Intellexa Limited (Ireland) — the corporate architecture behind the "Predator" commercial spyware platform — and Cytrox Holdings Zrt. (Hungary) and Cytrox AD (North Macedonia) — the developer of the underlying spyware technology — were listed for "trafficking in cyber exploits used to gain access to information systems, thereby threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide." All items subject to the EAR require a license with a presumption-of-denial review policy for all four entities, effectively cutting off access to US-origin hardware, software, and technology.