Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2678 actions· ✨ 92 recent

On 2 September 2025, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Waleed Khaled Hameed al-Samarra'i, a dual Iraqi/St Kitts-and-Nevis citizen, along with his UAE-based shipping manager Babylon and five Marshall Islands-registered shell companies (Tryfo Navigation, Keely Shiptrade, Odiar Management, Panarea Marine, Topsail Shipholding) that hold registered ownership of nine Liberia-flagged tankers (ADENA, LILIANA, CAMILLA, DELFINA, BIANCA, ROBERTA, ALEXANDRA, BELLAGIO, PAOLA). The network blends Iranian crude with Iraqi oil via ship-to-ship transfers in the Arabian Gulf and at Iraqi ports, then markets the blend as solely Iraqi-origin to evade US sanctions, generating hundreds of millions of dollars for the Iranian regime and al-Samarra'i. The action was taken pursuant to Executive Order 13902 and blocks all US property and interests of the designated individual, entities and vessels.

The FCC adopted a Report and Order (FCC 25-49) on 7 August 2025 — the first comprehensive overhaul of submarine cable landing license rules since 2001 — effective 26 November 2025. The order prohibits Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) agreements that would give entities from designated foreign adversary countries (China including Hong Kong and Macau, Cuba, Iran, DPRK, Russia, and Venezuela) control over Submarine Line Terminal Equipment (SLTE) on US cable landings, and mandates new annual reporting plus certification/disclosure requirements covering ownership, cybersecurity and physical security plans, and FCC Covered List compliance. The order operationalises the FCC's bifurcated policy package: accelerating legitimate commercial cable buildout while hardening national-security review for foreign-adversary-connected infrastructure.

On 30 April 2025 the US Department of State designated seven entities and identified two vessels as blocked property for facilitating trade in Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products, under Executive Order 13846 and in furtherance of National Security Presidential Memorandum 2 (NSPM-2, "Restoring Maximum Pressure on the Government of Iran"). The action named four UAE-based sellers and one purchaser of Iranian petrochemicals — including Solvent Organics (over $300 million in exports of Iranian-origin petrochemicals to third countries) and Alseerah Trading (over $150 million) — plus a Turkiye-based petrochemical trader, an Iran-based cargo inspection company, and a marine management company involved in transporting millions of barrels of Iranian crude. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated the goal was to drive Iran's illicit oil and petrochemical exports, including to China, to zero.

President Trump signed Executive Order 14269 on 9 April 2025 (FR publication 15 April 2025), launching the first whole-of-government US shipbuilding and maritime industrial-policy instrument since the 1996 Maritime Security Program. The order directs development of an America's Maritime Action Plan (MAP) under APNSA leadership within 210 days (released 13 February 2026) and tasks DoD, DoT, DHS, Commerce, USTR, and OMB with a sequenced set of reviews covering deregulation of the domestic commercial maritime fleet, expansion of the Maritime Industrial Base, mariner workforce development, Maritime Prosperity Zones, and Office of Strategic Capital loan deployment to commercial shipyards. The EO is the cross-government industrial-policy umbrella; the simultaneously-developed USTR Section 301 China Maritime/Logistics/Shipbuilding action (filed 17 April 2025) is the China-specific tariff-track instrument.

On January 10, 2025, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), acting jointly with the Department of State, designated PJSC Gazprom Neft and PJSC Surgutneftegas as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) under Executive Orders 13662 and 14024, alongside more than 180 oil-carrying vessels (the bulk of Russia's "shadow fleet"), dozens of opaque oil traders, two major Russia-based oilfield service providers, marine insurance companies, and senior Russian energy-sector officials. The package included a new EO 14024 sectoral determination authorizing future designations against any person operating in the Russian energy sector, plus a new EO 14071 determination prohibiting the provision of US petroleum services (extraction, drilling, production support) to persons located in the Russian Federation, effective 12:01 a.m. EST on February 27, 2025. OFAC simultaneously issued General Licenses 117 (wind-down of transactions with the newly blocked entities) and 118 (debt/equity/derivatives wind-down), both expiring February 27, 2025. The action was the largest single Russia energy-sector designation since the 2022 invasion regime began and was coordinated with parallel UK OFSI shadow-fleet designations issued the same week. The action was finalized in the closing days of the Biden administration as a deliberate tightening of the oil-revenue and shadow-fleet vectors before the January 20 transition. Subsequent enforcement and any rollback decisions fell to the incoming Trump administration.