Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

President Trump signed Executive Order "Ending Certain Tariff Actions" on 20 February 2026 (Federal Register doc 2026-03832, published 25 February 2026), terminating the additional ad-valorem duties imposed under nine prior IEEPA-based executive orders. The order followed within hours of the US Supreme Court's 6-3 decision the same day in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), holding that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the President to impose tariffs and vacating the Trump 2.0 IEEPA tariff regime. The EO directs CBP to cease collection "as soon as practicable"; CSMS guidance set the collection-end date at 12:00 a.m. eastern on 24 February 2026. The order explicitly preserves all underlying national-emergency declarations and all non-IEEPA trade actions — Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, Section 301 of the Trade Act, Section 122 of the Trade Act, and Section 201 — so the Section 232 cascade and the paired Section 122 10% temporary surcharge (effective 24 Feb 2026) remain in force. This is the first SCOTUS-driven repeal of a presidential tariff regime in the modern era and recalibrates the entire post-2024 US tariff architecture by removing IEEPA as a legal pillar.

On 30 July 2025, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated more than 50 individuals and entities and identified more than 50 vessels belonging to the shipping empire of Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, son of Ali Shamkhani, a top political adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader. Treasury described the action — over 115 sanctions in total — as its largest Iran-related action since 2018. The network launders billions of dollars from sales of Iranian and Russian crude oil and petroleum products (mostly to buyers in China) through vessels and front companies registered across the UAE, Hong Kong, India, Cyprus, Panama, Romania, China, Liberia, the Marshall Islands and Seychelles. Concurrently, the State Department designated 20 entities and identified 10 vessels under E.O. 13846 and E.O. 13902 for trading and transporting Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products.

H.R.1, the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (Public Law 119-21), was signed into law by President Trump on 4 July 2025. The budget-reconciliation statute is the single largest reversal of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) industrial-policy framework: it accelerates the termination of IRA-era clean- energy tax credits and overlays a new "Foreign Entity of Concern" (FEOC) / "Prohibited Foreign Entity" (PFE) regime on the credits that survive. The §25E used-EV credit, the §30D new clean-vehicle credit, the §45W commercial clean-vehicle credit, and the §30C alternative-fuel-refueling-property credit terminate for vehicles or property placed in service after 30 September 2025. The §25C energy-efficient home improvement credit and the §25D residential clean-energy credit terminate for property placed in service after 31 December 2025. The §45Y clean-electricity production credit and §48E clean-electricity investment credit are eliminated for wind and solar facilities placed in service after 31 December 2027, with a safe harbour for projects whose construction begins on or before 4 July 2026. From 1 January 2026, projects beginning construction must satisfy "material assistance" thresholds limiting the share of components, subcomponents and critical minerals sourced from prohibited foreign entities (PRC, Russia, Iran, DPRK and entities controlled by them). For §45Y/§48E facilities the threshold starts at 40% non-PFE content in 2026 and steps up by 5 percentage points per year through 2030; for §45X advanced manufacturing PTC the analogous schedule begins at 50% in 2026 and rises through the decade. CBO scored the package's energy-credit terminations as generating roughly USD 280bn of revenue (gross), of which USD 77.4bn from §25D termination, USD 21.2bn from §25C, USD 77.8bn from §30D, USD 104.5bn from §45W, and USD 2bn from §30C, partially offsetting the bill's other tax cuts. The bill simultaneously re-authorises and broadens the §48D advanced manufacturing investment tax credit for semiconductor fabs, raising the credit rate from 25% to 35% for property placed in service after 31 December 2025 (preserving the CHIPS Act-aligned semiconductor leg of the IRA-era stack). The OBBBA therefore reshapes the IRA from a broad-based clean-energy + EV + manufacturing pull-through into a narrower, China-decoupling industrial policy concentrated on semiconductors and (residually) §45X battery / critical- mineral processing.

Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs International Trade Administration (MOEA-ITA) amended the Strategic High-Tech Commodities (SHTC) export-control Entity List on 10 June 2025 (announced 15 June 2025) under Article 13 of the Trade Act, adding 601 new entities — including Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) plus 599 additional entities domiciled in China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Myanmar. Taiwanese exporters (TSMC, UMC, ASE, KYEC and downstream suppliers) must obtain pre-export government licences for direct or third-party shipments of any SHTC-listed item to the listed entities; the action expands Taiwan's total entity-list population to ~10,844 entities. Two follow-on amendments tightened the regime further: a +279-entity expansion on 18 September 2025 and an 18-item commodity-list expansion on 18 November 2025 covering advanced 3D printers, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, electron microscopes and quantum-computing hardware.

On 4 February 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-2, "Imposing Maximum Pressure on the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Denying Iran All Paths to a Nuclear Weapon, and Countering Iran's Malign Influence." The memorandum reimposes the first- term "maximum pressure" framework, directing the Secretaries of State and Treasury and the Attorney General to (i) drive Iran's exports of crude oil and petroleum products — including to the People's Republic of China — to zero; (ii) review and modify or rescind sanctions waivers and general licences (notably the Chabahar port waiver benefiting India); (iii) sanction shadow-fleet vessels, intermediaries, refineries (including PRC "teapot" refiners) and oil traders facilitating Iranian energy exports; and (iv) lead a diplomatic isolation campaign including a snapback of UN Security Council sanctions under JCPOA Resolution 2231 paragraph 11. Since promulgation, OFAC has designated 1,000+ Iran-related persons, vessels and aircraft and four PRC independent ("teapot") refiners alleged to have processed sanctioned Iranian crude. The DOJ is also directed to pursue impoundment of Iranian oil cargoes and seizure of Iranian assets to satisfy US-court terrorism-victim judgments.