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

The Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 4) Regulations 2023 (SI 2023/1364) amend the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 to prohibit UK persons from acquiring, importing, supplying or delivering listed Russian-origin metals and metal articles, delivering the Prime Minister's commitment to ban Russian copper, nickel and aluminium. Per law-firm summaries the list (a new Schedule 3BA) also covers lead, zinc, tin, tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum, magnesium, cobalt, antimony, manganese and further metals, and most provisions took effect on 15 December 2023 with a grace period for cargoes consigned before that date.

Finance (No. 2) Act 2023 (c. 30), receiving royal assent on 11 July 2023, enacts the UK's domestic implementation of the OECD/G20 Pillar Two GloBE (Global Anti-Base Erosion) rules via two interlocking charges: Part 3 establishes the Multinational Top-up Tax (MTT) — the UK's IIR-equivalent charge on UK members of MNE groups whose jurisdictional effective tax rate (ETR) falls below 15% in any territory — and Part 4 establishes the Domestic Top-up Tax (DTT), the UK's Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax (QDMTT) that collects top-up on UK-located constituents before any foreign IIR can apply. Both charges apply to UK members of MNE groups with consolidated group revenue ≥ EUR 750 million for accounting periods beginning on or after 31 December 2023; section 121 of the Act expressly states that the purpose of Part 3 is "to implement the provisions of the Pillar Two rules relating to top-up tax." The UK adopted a "redrafted in domestic style" transposition approach — writing the GloBE mechanics into UK statute rather than straight transposition of OECD model language — a method subsequently mirrored by Korea's AITA Chapter V approach.

The UK government published its National Semiconductor Strategy on 19 May 2023, under Secretary of State Michelle Donelan at the newly established Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). The strategy commits GBP 1 billion in long-run support to the UK semiconductor sector, explicitly focusing on the UK's identified strengths: chip design (Arm, Imagination Technologies, Dialog), compound and wide-bandgap semiconductors (III-V, SiC, GaN -- centred on the Cardiff/Newport cluster and IQE plc), and upstream academic R&D. Unlike the US CHIPS Act or EU Chips Act, the strategy explicitly declined to fund advanced silicon wafer fabrication at scale, acknowledging the prohibitive capital cost and the UK's lack of existing fab infrastructure at leading nodes. A UK Semiconductor Advisory Panel was established to guide delivery and assess emerging requirements. The strategy is enabled by the UK Subsidy Control Act 2022 (in force January 2023), which freed UK public authorities to grant large technology subsidies without prior EU Commission approval.

On 24 February 2023, to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the UK government announced a new sanctions package including an import ban on over 140 goods (including iron and steel products processed in third countries), an export ban on battlefield-relevant goods, and 92 new asset-freeze designations. The measures were legislated by the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 (SI 2023/440), which came into force on 21 April 2023, except the third-country-processed iron and steel import provision (Regulation 3), which came into force on 30 September 2023.