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

On 19 February 2026 Presidents Trump and Prabowo finalised the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) between the United States and Indonesia. The deal locks the US reciprocal tariff on Indonesian imports at 19% (down from the 32% threatened in April 2025), with 0% on a defined list of products and a textile/apparel quota benchmarked to US-cotton/MMF inputs. Indonesia commits to remove export restrictions on all industrial commodities — explicitly including critical minerals across the full value chain — and to grant US investors national treatment in mineral exploration, mining, processing and export. Indonesia also agrees to eliminate tariff barriers on >99% of US-origin goods, while a Freeport-McMoRan MOU extends the Grasberg copper-mine licence (~USD 10bn/yr revenue, world's 2nd largest copper mine) and a parallel commercial package totalling ~USD 33bn (energy USD 15bn, aerospace incl. Boeing USD 13.5bn, agriculture USD 4.5bn) is signed alongside.

President Trump signed Executive Order 14382, "Addressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Iran," on 6 February 2026 (effective 12:01 a.m. EST on 7 February 2026; published in the Federal Register on 11 February 2026 as FR doc 2026-02813, 91 FR 6493-6496). Invoking IEEPA, the National Emergencies Act, section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974 and 3 U.S.C. § 301, the order declared a country-specific national emergency with respect to Iran and established a secondary-tariff-authority framework: an additional ad valorem duty (the EO offers "for example, 25 percent" as illustration but sets no binding rate) is authorised on imports of articles produced by any foreign country determined to directly or indirectly purchase, import, or otherwise acquire any goods or services from Iran. Determinations are made by the Secretary of Commerce, with rate recommendations from the Secretary of State in consultation with Treasury, DHS and USTR; the President retains final authority. EO 14382 was structurally modelled on EO 14245 (Venezuelan oil importing countries, 24 March 2025) and EO 14380 (Cuba, 29 January 2026), and was on the list of nine IEEPA-based tariff EOs whose tariff component was vacated by the SCOTUS 6-3 ruling in *Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump* (20 February 2026). The companion EO 14389 of 20 February 2026 ("Ending Certain Tariff Actions") extinguished the tariff authority for entries on or after 12:00 a.m. ET on 24 February 2026; the underlying Iran national- emergency declaration was preserved. No third-country determination or specific rate was operationalised under EO 14382 prior to vacatur.

President Trump signed Executive Order 14380, "Addressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Cuba," on 29 January 2026 (effective 12:01 a.m. EST on 30 January 2026; published in the Federal Register on 3 February 2026 as FR doc 2026-02250, 91 FR 5085-5089). Invoking IEEPA and the National Emergencies Act, the order declared a country-specific national emergency with respect to Cuba, citing Havana's intelligence and defense alignment with Russia, the PRC, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah — including the Russian signals-intelligence facility hosted on the island. The operative measure was a secondary-tariff-authority framework: the EO authorises additional ad valorem duties on goods imported from any country determined to be selling or otherwise providing oil to the Government of Cuba, whether directly or indirectly. No specific rate was set in the EO itself — rate-setting was delegated to the Secretary of Commerce (in consultation with State, Treasury, DHS and USTR). The EO was structurally analogous to EO 14245 (Venezuelan oil importing countries, 24 March 2025) and was on the list of nine IEEPA-based tariff EOs whose tariff component was vacated by the SCOTUS 6-3 ruling in *Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump* (20 February 2026); the underlying Cuba national-emergency declaration was preserved by the 20 February 2026 "Ending Certain Tariff Actions" EO, but the tariff authority was extinguished before any third-country determination or rate was operationalised.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security issued a final rule (RIN 0694-AK43, 91 FR 1684, signed 13 January 2026, effective 15 January 2026) revising the EAR license-review policy for exports of certain advanced-computing integrated circuits to end-users in China and Macau from a presumption of denial to case-by-case review. Eligibility is limited to commodities controlled under ECCN 3A090.a and 3A090.b with a Total Processing Performance (TPP) below 21,000 and total DRAM bandwidth below 6,500 GB/s — the band that covers NVIDIA H200 and AMD MI325X-equivalents and below. To qualify, exporters must certify (i) sufficiency of US supply such that the export will not delay domestic orders or divert foundry capacity, (ii) that aggregate TPP of advanced-node ICs exported to China or Macau will not exceed 50% of domestic shipments, (iii) compliance with end-use and end-user prohibitions, and (iv) prior performance review by a qualified independent third-party testing lab headquartered in the United States. The rule is the first material rollback of the October 2022 / October 2023 / December 2024 advanced-computing export-control architecture and operationalises the Trump-administration policy of trading H200-class chip access against Chinese cooperation on critical minerals, fentanyl precursors and Taiwan-strait restraint.

On 6 November 2025, the US Department of the Interior (DOI) and the US Geological Survey (USGS) released the final 2025 List of Critical Minerals under the Energy Act of 2020 (30 U.S.C. § 1606), expanding the designation from 50 to 60 minerals. The final list adds 10 newly designated commodities — boron, copper, lead, metallurgical coal, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon, silver, and uranium — based on updated supply-chain disruption modelling, public comment, and interagency recommendations. The list constitutes the foundational statutory anchor for downstream US critical-minerals policy instruments including DPA Title III awards, DOE LPO Title 17 loan eligibility, IRA Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit eligibility, Section 30D FEOC determinations, BIS export-control predicate assessments, Section 232 trade-investigation predicates, and CFIUS critical-technology triggers under 31 CFR § 800.215.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published in the Federal Register (89 FR 84472–84474, FR Doc 2024-24524) three general licenses issued under the Western Balkans Stabilization Regulations (31 CFR Part 588): GL 3A, GL 4, and GL 5. All three were originally issued on 18 June 2024 concurrent with OFAC's expansion of Republika Srpska / Dodik-network designations; the 23 October 2024 Federal Register notice formalises them per the Administrative Procedure Act notice requirements. GL 3A (which superseded GL 3 of 16 November 2023) authorises transactions involving certain WBSR-blocked entities that are ordinarily incident and necessary to the exportation or re-exportation of agricultural commodities, medicine, medical devices, replacement parts and components, software updates, or activities involving medical prevention, diagnosis, treatment, or clinical trials. GL 4 authorises wind-down transactions with entities blocked on 18 June 2024 through a defined cutoff. GL 5 authorises transactions ordinarily incident and necessary to the manufacture, distribution, operation, installation, or maintenance/repair of drinking-water pumps manufactured or distributed by the WBSR-blocked Bosnian Serb entity Kaldera Company EL PGP d.o.o. (and 50%-or-more-owned subsidiaries), preserving municipal water supply continuity.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a final rule amending three sanctions programs. The rule adds a new general license at 31 CFR § 525.512 to the Burma Sanctions Regulations authorizing the provision of agricultural commodities, medicine, medical devices, replacement parts and components for medical devices, and software updates for medical devices to individuals whose property and interests in property are blocked. It also updates the authorities section of the Burma Sanctions Regulations to reflect recent legislation, replaces "the Office of Foreign Assets Control" / "the Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control" with the acronym "OFAC" in three sections of the Sudan Stabilization Sanctions Regulations, and corrects a cross-reference in the Ukraine-/Russia- Related Sanctions Regulations. The rule is effective on publication.

OFAC amended and reissued the Global Magnitsky Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR Part 583) in their entirety on 12 March 2024, to implement the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and EO 13818 (20 December 2017) more fully. The reissuance adds expanded interpretive guidance, new definitions (agricultural commodities, medicines, medical devices), new statutory authority (Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020), and several new general licenses covering blocked-account management, legal services, personal-use medical/food transactions, and emergency services. No new SDN designations or country-level targeting; the action is a compliance-architecture update that clarifies permissible conduct and tightens procedural standards across the global human-rights-and-corruption sanctions program.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published in the Federal Register (89 FR 16400, FR Doc 2024-04856) two general licenses issued under the Western Balkans Stabilization Regulations (31 CFR Part 588): GL 2 and GL 3. Both were originally issued on 16 November 2023 concurrent with OFAC's initial round of Republika Srpska / Dodik-network designations; the 7 March 2024 Federal Register notice formalises them per the Administrative Procedure Act notice requirements. GL 2 authorises wind-down transactions with newly blocked WBSR entities through 15 March 2024. GL 3 authorises exports and re-exports of agricultural commodities, medicine, medical devices, replacement parts, and services for medical prevention and treatment to WBSR-blocked persons; GL 3 was subsequently superseded by GL 3A on 18 June 2024.

OFAC amended § 510.512 of the North Korea Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR Part 510) to broaden the scope of authorized humanitarian activities for NGOs operating in North Korea, including permitting transactions with certain Government of North Korea entities where necessary to deliver authorized services. Three new general licenses were added: one for exports and re-exports of items licensed by the Commerce Department; one for agricultural commodities, medicine, and medical devices; and one for journalistic activities in North Korea. NGOs relying on the authorization must notify the State Department at least 30 days before commencing activity.

On 20–21 December 2022 OFAC published two final rules (87 FR 78470 and 87 FR 78484) amending regulations across more than 30 sanctions programs to add general licenses (GLs) authorising four categories of humanitarian activity: (1) certain NGO transactions for disaster relief, health, democracy support, education, environmental protection, and peacebuilding; (2) provision of agricultural commodities, medicine, medical devices, replacement parts, and software updates for medical devices to blocked persons for personal, non-commercial use; (3) US government official-business transactions; and (4) official-business transactions of designated international organisations (e.g. UN, ICRC). The rules amended 29 CFR parts spanning Nicaragua, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen, and more than two dozen other sanctioned programs. The NGO GL excludes knowing fund transfers to blocked persons unless specified criteria are met, preserving the core blocking perimeter while lowering humanitarian-access friction.

OFAC issued a determination under Executive Order 14071 (Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions) effective December 5, 2022, establishing a $60/barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil. The measure prohibits US persons from providing six categories of covered services — trading/commodities brokering, financing, shipping, insurance (including reinsurance and P&I), flagging, and customs brokering — for the maritime transport of Russian crude oil unless the oil is purchased at or below $60/bbl. The determination was coordinated with the EU, G7 nations, and Australia as a unified coalition instrument designed to reduce Russian oil revenues while keeping global energy markets supplied. Three general licenses (GL 55, 56, 57) carved out limited exemptions for Japan's Sakhalin-2 imports, certain EU landlocked states, and vessel emergencies.

On 4 August 2022 OFAC formally published in the Federal Register nine general licenses (GLs 17–25) that had previously been made available only on OFAC's website under EO 14065 (Donetsk/Luhansk regions) and, for GL 25, also EO 13685 (Crimea). GL 17, which authorised wind-down of Donetsk/Luhansk transactions, had already expired on 23 March 2022. GLs 18–25 remain in force and authorise a structured set of humanitarian and civil-society carve-outs — covering agricultural commodities, medicine and medical devices, telecommunications, official international organisation business, personal remittances, internet-based communications, NGO activities, civil maritime services, and journalistic activities — within the otherwise restricted territory of Crimea, the so-called Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), and the Luhansk People's Republic (LNR).

OFAC amends the Terrorism List Governments Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR Part 596) to implement the Secretary of State's December 14, 2020 rescission of Sudan's State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) designation, which Sudan had held since 1993. The rule removes references to the Government of Sudan and Sudanese nationals from §596.505 (the prohibition on financial transactions with SST-listed governments) and deletes §596.506 (which had required OFAC licensing for exports of agricultural commodities, medicine, and medical devices to Sudan). The action reduces the US-Sudan sanctions perimeter by eliminating the TLGSR layer; the separate Darfur/ stabilization program (31 CFR Part 546) remains intact.

The Biden administration on 2 March 2021 determined, pursuant to the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (CBW Act), that Russia used a Novichok-class nerve agent against opposition figure Alexei Navalny in August 2020 — the third CBW Act invocation against Russia (after Salisbury 2018 and its follow-on 2019 round). The determination triggered mandatory statutory sanctions including termination of US foreign assistance to Russia (except humanitarian aid and food/agricultural commodities), suspension of US arms and defense-article sales and export authorisations to Russia, and denial of US government credit and financial assistance. Seven Russian government officials linked to the poisoning were concurrently designated by Treasury/OFAC. The measures take effect after a mandatory 15-day congressional notification period and remain in force for at least 12 months unless Russia certifies Chemical Weapons Convention compliance and takes other required steps.