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

On 22 December 2025 the FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau released Public Notice DA-25-1086, adding to the Covered List (under section 1709 of the FY2025 NDAA) all unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and UAS critical components produced in a foreign country, plus communications and video-surveillance equipment/services produced by DJI Technologies and Autel Robotics (and their subsidiaries, affiliates, and licensing/JV partners). The designation is comprehensive by scope — every foreign-made drone from consumer quadcopters to large uncrewed systems, with no size/performance carve-out — and blocks the FCC from granting any new equipment authorization to covered UAS/components going forward. Previously authorized models already in the US market are not revoked. A follow-on Public Notice (DA-26-22, 7 January 2026) narrowed the scope with a temporary exemption (see amendments).

Arrêté ministériel n° 00964/CAB.MIN/MINES/01/2025, signed 19 December 2025 by DRC Mines Minister Louis Watum Kabamba, suspends with immediate effect all activities of entities (notably comptoirs d'achat / buying counters, treatment units and similar structures) involved in the purchase, processing, transformation and commercialisation of copper and cobalt minerals sourced from artisanal exploitation across the country. Industrial, legally established mining operators are excluded. The order requires affected entities to submit compliance documentation within ten days, establishes an ad hoc commission to verify administrative, legal, technical and traceability conformity (15-day review window), and obliges operators to demonstrate the lawful origin of their supplies in line with OECD due-diligence guidance. Framed as a "conservatory" measure to restore order in the cupro-cobaltifère value chain and curb illicit exports.

Section 851 of the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 119-60), signed December 18, 2025, prohibits US federal agencies from procuring biotechnology equipment or services from designated "biotechnology companies of concern" (BCCs), and bars federal contractors from using such equipment/services in work performed under federal contracts, grants, or loans. The final enacted text ties initial BCC designations to DoD's existing §1260H Chinese-military-company list (which currently includes BGI and MGI, but not WuXi AppTec or WuXi Biologics) and directs OMB to designate additional BCCs within one year of enactment; operational prohibitions activate 60-90 days after FAR revision, with a five-year grandfather period for pre-existing contracts — enforcement is expected to begin in 2027-28. The legislation is the successor to H.R.8333 (118th Congress, House-passed September 2024 but stalled in the Senate before adjournment) and represents the first enacted US federal-procurement biotech-supply-chain-resilience statute.

In the early hours of 11 December 2025 the Council of the EU and the European Parliament reached provisional political agreement in trilogue on the "EU Pharma Package" — the revised pharmaceutical Regulation (COM 2023/0131) and Directive (COM 2023/0132) — the most significant overhaul of EU pharmaceutical legislation in over two decades. The package replaces Directive 2001/83/EC (Community Code on medicinal products for human use) and Regulation (EC) 726/2004 (the EMA Regulation), and consolidates the orphan-medicine (Regulation 141/2000) and pediatric-medicine regulations into a single framework. Headline provisions: (i) a new "8+1(+1)(+1)" IP-incentive architecture — 8 years of regulatory data protection plus 1 year of market protection, with up to two additional 12-month extensions for products addressing unmet medical need or new active substances meeting comparative-trial conditions, capped at 11 years total; (ii) an EU-wide list of critical medicines under enhanced governance via the Medicines Shortages Steering Group (MSSG) and an EMA "list of critical shortages in the EU"; (iii) mandatory shortage-prevention plans on marketing-authorisation holders for prescription medicines and Commission-designated products; (iv) modernisation of clinical-trial requirements, environmental-risk assessment, antimicrobial stewardship, and a transferable-exclusivity-voucher (TEV) regime to incentivise novel antibiotic R&D. The COREPER I committee endorsed the compromise text on 6 March 2026 and final adoption by Parliament and Council is expected during summer 2026, with the regulatory framework becoming applicable in 2028.

On 10 December 2025 the European Commission opened an in-depth investigation under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) — its first ex officio Phase II investigation — into whether Chinese state-controlled security-scanner producer Nuctech received foreign subsidies enabling it to offer prices and conditions that EU competitors could not match across airport, port, and border-crossing markets. Nuctech Technology, controlled by Tsinghua Tongfang (PRC state-linked), operates EU subsidiaries in Poland and the Netherlands (Nuctech Warsaw and Nuctech Netherlands), supplying threat-detection scanners to roughly 80% of EU airports and 70% of EU sea and land border crossings. The case (FS.100068) followed April 2024 unannounced FSR dawn raids at Nuctech's Polish and Dutch premises — one of the first uses of FSR inspection powers — and sets a precedent for ex officio scrutiny of state-subsidised foreign incumbents beyond the M&A and public-procurement tracks where FSR had previously operated.

Morocco's Loi de Finances n° 50-25 for fiscal year 2026, promulgated by Dahir n° 1-25-67 of 10 December 2025 and published in Bulletin Officiel n° 7465 bis of 16 December 2025, sets the FY2026 customs-tariff schedule (continuing the EU Common External Tariff alignment process at 2.5%/17.5%/40% tiers with sector-specific input reductions), amends the fiscal regimes for Zones d'Accélération Industrielle and Casablanca Finance City, and delivers the 2026 tranche of the multi-year IS (corporate-tax) rate-convergence schedule under Framework Law n° 69-19. The law also extends green-investment fiscal accelerators aligned with the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and the EU-Morocco Strategic Partnership on Sustainable Raw Materials Value Chains, and contains phosphate-sector fiscal provisions affecting OCP Group's DAP/MAP/TSP export treatment. Entry into force: 1 January 2026.

On 10 December 2025 the National Assembly of Vietnam adopted Law No. 134/2025/QH15 on Artificial Intelligence (8 chapters, 35 articles), Vietnam's first dedicated AI statutory framework and one of the first comprehensive horizontal AI laws in Southeast Asia. The law establishes a three-tier risk-based regulatory architecture (high / medium / low) for the research, development, provision, deployment, and use of AI systems; defines the rights and obligations of providers, deployers, importers, distributors, and users; and mandates state oversight via the Ministry of Information & Communications and Ministry of Science & Technology. Prohibited acts include systematic deception, manipulation of human perception, generation of fake content endangering national security, exploitation of vulnerable populations, and obstruction of human-supervision mechanisms. The law applies to Vietnamese agencies, organizations, and individuals as well as foreign organizations and individuals involved in AI-related activities in Vietnam, taking effect 1 March 2026 with 12-18 month transition windows for existing systems depending on sector.

Vietnam's National Assembly passed Law on Cybersecurity No. 116/2025/QH15 on 10 December 2025 (434 of 443 deputies in favour), effective 1 July 2026. The law supersedes both the 2018 Cybersecurity Law (Law 24/2018/QH14) and the 2015 Law on Cyber Information Security, consolidating cybersecurity, cyber-information-security, and network-information-security into a unified Ministry of Public Security-led framework. It retains data-localization obligations for foreign digital-service providers handling personal data, user-generated content, and relationship graphs of Vietnamese users (minimum 24-month retention), introduces 6-hour urgent / 24-hour standard content take-down windows on MPS request, expressly prohibits AI/deepfake forgery of images, voices, and videos for illegal purposes, and mandates child-safety platform measures.

On 24 November 2025 Barrick Mining Corporation and the Government of Mali announced a comprehensive settlement resolving all disputes arising from the Loulo-Gounkoto gold complex, including the June 2025 provisional state administration order. Under the agreement Barrick commits to pay approximately USD 430 million (≈244 billion CFA francs) to Mali in cash and VAT-credit offsets, formally accedes to Mali's 2023 Mining Code (Loi 2023-040), and receives in exchange: cancellation of all charges against Barrick entities and personnel, release of four detained employees, return of three metric tons of previously seized gold (~USD 400 million), termination of the provisional administration, and a ten-year renewal of the Loulo mine permit (which had been set to expire in February 2026). Full operational control was restored to Barrick on 18 December 2025.

President Claudia Sheinbaum signed a comprehensive reform to Mexico's Customs Law (Ley Aduanera) published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 19 November 2025, entering into force 1 January 2026. The decree formally recognises the Agencia Nacional de Aduanas de México (ANAM) as the autonomous customs authority with expanded inspection and fiscalisation powers, creates a new inter-secretarial Consejo Aduanero with binding decisional authority over customs-agent licensing, and mandates real-time electronic traceability and video-surveillance at all recintos fiscales. The reform is Mexico's most comprehensive statutory overhaul of its customs-administration architecture in over a decade, directly conditioning USMCA-origin compliance infrastructure for approximately US$800 billion in annual MX-US trade and over 3,200 IMMEX-registered nearshoring operators.

On 18 November 2025, the European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, ESMA, and EIOPA) jointly designated 19 Critical ICT Third-Party Providers (CTPPs) under DORA Article 31, with immediate effect — the first-ever exercise of direct EU financial-regulator supervision over hyperscale cloud and infrastructure providers. The designated entities include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Deutsche Telekom, Oracle, SAP, IBM, Bloomberg LP, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), Tata Consultancy Services, and Orange, among others. Designation triggers direct oversight by a lead ESA (EBA for banking-critical, ESMA for capital-markets-critical, EIOPA for insurance-critical) via Joint Examination Teams (JETs), with powers to conduct investigations, carry out on-site inspections, and impose fines of up to 1% of average daily worldwide turnover per day for non-compliance.

India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) notified the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 via Gazette notification G.S.R. 846(E) on 13 November 2025, operationalising the 2023 DPDP Act. The Rules introduce a "negative list" cross-border personal-data transfer regime under Rule 14, verifiable parental consent, breach-notification windows, and tiered penalties up to INR 250 crore. Implementation is phased: Data Protection Board provisions in force on notification, Consent Manager rules from 13 Nov 2026, and core data-fiduciary / cross-border-transfer obligations from 13 May 2027.

Germany's transposition of EU Directive 2022/2555 (NIS2), enacted as the "Gesetz zur Umsetzung der NIS-2-Richtlinie und zur Regelung wesentlicher Grundzüge des Informationssicherheitsmanagements in der Bundesverwaltung." Bundestag passage 13 November 2025; Bundesrat approval 21 November 2025; published as BGBl. I 2025 Nr. 301 on 5 December 2025; entered into force 6 December 2025. The statute designates the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) as the central national supervisory authority over an estimated 29,500 covered entities across 18 critical and important sectors, introduces a mandatory 24h initial / 72h detailed / 1-month final cyber-incident reporting cascade, establishes board-level personal liability for senior management, and applies to SME critical- infrastructure suppliers — with no transitional grace period from entry into force.

Senegal adopted a new Mining Code under President Bassirou Diomaye Faye's sovereignty-reform mandate, replacing the 2016 framework. The code strengthens the state's free-carried interest and participating-interest rights in mining operations, imposes stricter local-content requirements (processing, employment, procurement), and introduces enhanced royalty and revenue-capture provisions aligned with the WAEMU 2023 regional mining regulation. Community development plan obligations are also reinforced, and the code provides the legal foundation for the concurrent licence-revocation process overseen by the March 2026 National Commission review of 71 permits.

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.

FinCEN issued a final rule under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act (31 U.S.C. § 5318A) prohibiting US covered financial institutions from opening or maintaining a correspondent account for, or on behalf of, Cambodia-based Huione Group, a foreign financial institution found to be of primary money-laundering concern. Treasury determined that Huione Group and its subsidiaries — including Haowang Guarantee, Huione Pay PLC, and Huione Crypto — laundered at least $4 billion of illicit proceeds between August 2021 and January 2025, including funds tied to North Korean cyber-heist actors and Southeast Asian "pig-butchering" investment-scam compounds. The rule also imposes a special-due-diligence requirement on US covered institutions to guard against indirect access via foreign correspondent accounts. Effective November 17, 2025.

The Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) formally introduced a Rare Earth Mining Management Regulation in October 2025, establishing permit procedures, investor obligations, environmental protection rules, chemical-use standards, labour provisions, and enforcement mechanisms for the heavy-rare-earth (HREE) mining industry it controls in Chipwi and Pangwa townships of Kachin State. The KIO assumed de facto territorial governance of Kachin Special Region No. 1 in October 2024 following KIA military operations, inheriting authority over hundreds of Chinese-operated extraction sites that collectively supply an estimated 60–70 % of China's heavy rare earth oxide imports (~41,700 t in 2023) — the proximate basis for China's ~95 % global market share in terbium, dysprosium, and holmium. The regulation formalises a permit-and-tax regime that includes an export levy of approximately 35,000 CNY/tonne (~USD 4,800), with export permission first reactivated by KIO on 27 March 2025 after a post-takeover suspension of all mining and export activity.

The Bank of Zambia formally accepted Chinese renminbi (RMB/CNY) for copper and cobalt mining royalty and tax payments starting October 2025, making Zambia the first African country to establish an official RMB settlement channel for mining fiscal flows. In December 2025 the BoZ began publishing an official RMB-kwacha exchange rate to enable precise royalty and corporate tax calculations. The central bank cited efficiency grounds: Chinese mining companies operating Zambia's largest copper producers already receive export revenues in yuan from Chinese off-takers, making yuan-denominated tax settlement a natural extension that also reduces Zambia's Chinese-debt servicing friction. The policy embeds Chinese currency infrastructure into the sovereign fiscal architecture governing Zambia's copper and cobalt supply chain, deepening structural alignment between Zambia's resource sector and China's commodity-import ecosystem.

Indonesia's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources issued Permen ESDM No. 17 of 2025 on procedures for preparing, submitting and approving Work Plans and Budgets (RKAB) and reporting of mineral and coal mining activities. Signed by Minister Bahlil Lahadalia on 30 September 2025 and in force from 3 October 2025, the regulation reverses the 2023 three-year RKAB cycle back to an annual cycle, requires all IUP/IUPK holders to resubmit through the new MinerbaOne digital portal between 1 October and 15 November each year, annuls previously-issued 2026/2027 quotas, and introduces a 5-working-day auto-approval rule. Operationalised by a 2026 nickel-ore RKAB target band of 250–270 million wmt — roughly one third below the 2025 approved quota of ~379 million wmt — explicitly framed as a price-management and conservation instrument. First clear use of the RKAB framework as an explicit market-management lever rather than a domestic-licensing tool.

Presidential Decree No. 693 of 30 September 2025 ("On certain particularities of the sale of property held in federal ownership"), signed by Vladimir Putin and entered into force on the day of its official publication, creates an accelerated pathway for disposing of federally-owned property in cases determined by a separate decision of the President, where the goal is to ensure the Russian Federation's defence capability and security. Market valuation and the appraisal report must be completed within 10 business days of signing the appraisal contract; PSB Bank JSC (formerly Promsvyazbank, the state-controlled defence-procurement bank) is designated as the sale-organising agent and seller-on-behalf-of-the-state. The Decree also authorises the President to set special features of how Russian legislation on privatisation, joint-stock companies, limited-liability companies, the securities market, banks and competition protection applies to such sales. Expressly framed as a counter-measure to "unfriendly" actions by the United States and its allies; structurally the disposal-mechanism complement to the foreign-asset external- administration and seizure decrees (95/322/520/442) — the fast-track liquidation channel that converts seized or nationalised assets into state-budget cash for defence purposes.

China's State Council promulgated Order No. 818 on 28 September 2025 (effective 1 May 2026), establishing a comprehensive dual-track regulatory framework for biomedical new technologies — defined as techniques operating at the cellular or molecular level not yet clinically applied in China, covering cell therapy, gene editing, CAR-T, stem-cell, xenotransplantation, brain-computer interfaces, and nucleic-acid therapies. The regulation creates two parallel pathways: a traditional NMPA drug/device registration route and a new NHC-supervised clinical-research-to-commercialization track applicable to highly personalised or rare-disease therapies meeting staged safety and efficacy thresholds. Commercialisation under the NHC track is initially restricted to accredited Grade-3A medical institutions without full NMPA marketing approval, potentially accelerating patient access for qualifying technologies by 5–8 years relative to the standard registration pathway.

Italy enacted Legge 23 settembre 2025, n. 132 — "Disposizioni e deleghe al Governo in materia di intelligenza artificiale" — published in Gazzetta Ufficiale Serie Generale n. 223 of 25 September 2025 (atto 25G00143) and entered into force on 10 October 2025. The statute makes Italy the first EU member state to enact a comprehensive national AI law complementing Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (EU AI Act), designating AgID (Agency for Digital Italy) and ACN (National Cybersecurity Agency) as national oversight authorities under Presidency-of-the-Council-of-Ministers coordination. It sets sectoral rules for healthcare, labour, intellectual professions, public administration and the judiciary; authorises up to €1 billion in state-backed venture capital (via CDP Venture Capital) for AI, cybersecurity and telecoms; creates criminal penalties of up to five years' imprisonment for harmful deepfakes; mandates parental consent for under-14 users; and delegates secondary legislation to the Government across multiple domains.

The MoEFCC Impact Assessment Division issued an Office Memorandum on 8 September 2025 categorically exempting all mining projects involving atomic minerals (uranium, thorium and the 12 minerals under the Atomic Energy Act 1962), the 30 critical minerals notified by the Ministry of Mines on 28 June 2023, and separately designated strategic minerals from the mandatory public-consultation stage (para 7(i)) of the EIA Notification 2006, invoking the existing national-defence and strategic-considerations clause. Exempted projects will instead undergo comprehensive appraisal by the relevant Sectoral Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC/EAC) at the central level regardless of project size, bypassing the standard Category-A/B thresholding architecture. The measure was issued in response to formal requests from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and directly accelerates the approval pipeline for the National Critical Mineral Mission (Rs 34,300 crore, 2025-2031).

Republic Act 12253, signed by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on 4 September 2025, replaces the Philippines' long-standing flat-royalty regime for large-scale metallic mining with a five-tier margin-based royalty (1–5% on income from mines outside mineral reservations; 5% retained inside reservations) layered on a five-tier windfall-profits tax (1–10% on profits above a 30% margin), and ring-fences each mining agreement as a separate taxable entity. The law amends the National Internal Revenue Code (RA 8424) and is projected to raise an additional PHP 25.08 bn over 2026–2029. The new fiscal regime became operative on 17 February 2026, 150 days after effectivity, with DOF-issued IRR.

MIIT, NDRC and MNR jointly issued the Interim Measures for Total Volume Control of Rare Earth Mining and Rare Earth Smelting and Separation on August 22, 2025, the first implementing regulation under State Council Order No. 785. The measures establish annual national production ceilings (for both mining and smelting/separation), distributed directly to designated enterprises at the start of each year, and — in the most novel provision — extend quota controls to rare-earth content in imported raw materials (e.g. Myanmar concentrate, Kazakh monazite, Guinea feedstocks) for the first time. Enterprises must report monthly output against quotas to local authorities and submit the prior month's flow data to an MIIT-operated traceability platform by the 10th of each month.

The Mauritius Finance Act 2025 (Act No. 18 of 2025), assented to by Acting President Dharambeer Gokhool G.C.S.K. and gazetted in August 2025, is an omnibus financial-sector statute amending the Companies Act, Financial Services Act 2007, Income Tax Act, Bank of Mauritius Act, and FIAMLA. Its headline provisions are: (i) introduction of a Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax (QDMTT) aligned with the OECD GloBE Pillar Two rules, imposing a 15% effective minimum tax on Mauritius profits of MNE groups with consolidated revenue ≥ EUR 750 million; (ii) new fiscal incentives for investments in AI infrastructure and Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) licensees; (iii) enhanced beneficial-ownership (UBO) identification and record-keeping requirements under the Companies Act, aligned with FATF Recommendation 24; (iv) tightened substance and economic-presence requirements for Global Business Companies (GBCs); and (v) an expanded AML/CFT administrative- penalty framework under FIAMLA.

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.

The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2025 (Act No. 40 of 2025), receiving Royal Assent on 5 August 2025, reverses the April 2018 Ardern-government offshore petroleum exploration ban by removing the prohibition on new offshore exploration permits beyond onshore Taranaki, re-opening New Zealand's Taranaki, East Coast, and Deepwater basins to international oil and gas investors. The Act simultaneously amends the purpose of the Crown Minerals Act 1991 from "sustainably manage" to "promote" prospecting, exploration, and mining of Crown-owned minerals — a fundamental posture shift from conservation to production. Additional provisions restructure the decommissioning-liability regime by granting the Minister of Resources discretion to re-assign liability to former permit holders, extend the confidentiality period for speculative-prospecting data by six years, and introduce a new Tier 3 permit category for small-scale non-commercial gold mining.

Czech Republic's first standalone federal statute on the resilience of critical-infrastructure entities — Act No. 266/2025 Sb., "Zákon o odolnosti subjektů kritické infrastruktury a o změně souvisejících zákonů" (Critical Infrastructure Act). Transposes EU Directive 2022/2557 (CER Directive on the resilience of critical entities) into Czech law and removes critical-infrastructure regulation from the earlier crisis-management law (Zákon č. 240/2000 Sb.) into a dedicated statute. Covers the 11 CER-Directive sectors (energy, transport, banking, financial-market infrastructure, health, drinking water, wastewater, digital infrastructure, public administration, space, food production-processing-distribution) and obligates designated operators of essential services to conduct risk analyses, implement technical/organisational resilience measures, report incidents to sector-competent authorities, and submit to inspection. Published in the Sbírka zákonů on 4 August 2025; in force 19 August 2025; operator information-obligation deadline 1 March 2026.

Türkiye's Ministry of Trade published İthalatta Gözetim Uygulanmasına İlişkin Tebliğ (No: 2023/2)'de Değişiklik Yapılmasına Dair Tebliğ in Resmî Gazete on 17 July 2025, doubling the unit customs (CIF) reference value that triggers the country's import-surveillance mechanism for photovoltaic cells not assembled into modules or panels (GTİP 8541.42.00.00.00), from USD 85/kg to USD 170/kg. Imports declared at or below the new threshold require a "gözetim belgesi" (supervision certificate) from the Imports General Directorate before customs clearance. The amendment entered into force sixty days after publication, on 15 September 2025. Global Trade Alert logs the intervention as "certainly harmful" and names China and Cambodia as the principal exporters affected. The measure does not block imports outright but raises the price floor below which a licensing/documentation step is triggered, functioning as a de facto minimum-price barrier against underpriced photovoltaic-cell imports — part of a broader push to protect Türkiye's domestic solar-manufacturing base as it scales toward the National Energy Plan's 52.9 GW installed-solar target.

Vietnam's Government adopted Decree 193/2025/ND-CP on 2 July 2025 (effective retroactively from 1 July 2025) as the primary operational statute elaborating the Law on Geology and Minerals No. 54/2024/QH15. The decree decentralises licensing for most mineral categories to provincial People's Committees while preserving central Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (MAE) authority over strategic and critical minerals, including rare earths, gold, uranium, and thorium. It codifies a three-tier Group I/II/III mineral classification, imposes a 100% financial-capacity bond requirement for exploration licences, sets a 40-working-day processing deadline, and defines the closed-enterprise framework that makes Vietnam's 1 January 2026 raw rare-earth export ban operationally enforceable through a Prime-Minister-designated list of licensed enterprises.

Türkiye's Grand National Assembly adopted Law No. 7552 (İklim Kanunu) on 2 July 2025, published in the Resmî Gazete on 9 July 2025 (Issue 32951) and entering into force immediately. The law is Türkiye's first comprehensive climate statute, establishing the legal framework for a national Emissions Trading System (ETS) — pilot phase from 2026, full implementation from 2028 — and creating the Carbon Market Board (Karbon Piyasası Kurulu) to govern allowance allocation and market operations. The ETS is designed for EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) compatibility, materially affecting Türkiye's steel, cement, aluminium, and fertilizer export sectors, for which the EU is the primary market.

Minister of Trade Regulation No. 20 of 2025, signed by Minister Budi Santoso on 30 June 2025 and effective 29 August 2025 (60 days after promulgation), reorganises Indonesia's import regime for chemicals, Hazardous Materials (B2), and a defined set of mining and energy inputs. The regulation revokes Permendag 8/2024 and requires holders of designated importer status (Importir Terdaftar / Importir Produsen) to secure an Import Approval (Persetujuan Impor) plus a post-arrival Surveyor Report (Laporan Surveyor) for an eleven-cluster commodity bundle including lubricant raw materials, cement clinker and cement, rough diamonds, non-pharmaceutical precursors, crude oil and natural gas, nitrocellulose, commercial-industrial explosives, ozone-depleting substances, hydrofluorocarbons, B2, and certain other chemicals (BKT). It is one of nine commodity-cluster Permendags issued the same day under the Prabowo administration's umbrella import-policy deregulation package.

Canada announced on 29 June 2025 that it would rescind the Digital Services Tax Act (originally enacted 20 June 2024) to revive US-Canada trade negotiations after President Trump suspended talks on 27 June, citing the 3% DST on large digital-services revenues as a discriminatory measure against US technology firms. The Canada Revenue Agency halted collection effective 30 June 2025, and legislation to retroactively repeal the Act back to its June 2024 enactment date is to follow, with refunds — plus interest at the standard corporate tax refund rate — to be paid to affected taxpayers including US technology majors.

On 26 June 2025, the Governing Board of Mexico's National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), invoking Article 129 of the Ley de Instituciones de Crédito, decreed the temporary managerial intervention of CI Banco, S.A. and Intercam Banco, S.A., replacing their administrative bodies and legal representatives. The measure came one day after the US Treasury's FinCEN designated both institutions (along with Vector Casa de Bolsa) as foreign financial institutions of primary money-laundering concern tied to opioid-trafficking networks, and prohibited certain US fund transmittals to them. CNBV/SHCP framed the intervention as a depositor- and creditor-protection measure to safeguard the two banks' operations against the fallout of the US action; Vector Casa de Bolsa was not included in the CNBV intervention.

On 26 June 2025 President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed four acts constituting Nigeria's most comprehensive fiscal overhaul in decades: the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 (NTA), Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025 (NTAA), Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act 2025, and Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act 2025. The NTA consolidates and repeals six core statutes — CITA, PITA, PPTA, VAT Act, CGT Act, and Stamp Duties Act — into a single unified code effective 1 January 2026, while the NTAA standardises assessment, filing, and enforcement procedures across all federal taxes. The two establishment acts restructure the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) into the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) with a broadened mandate and create an empowered Joint Revenue Board to coordinate federal-state fiscal relations.

The National Assembly of Vietnam passed the Personal Data Protection Law (Luật Bảo vệ dữ liệu cá nhân), Law No. 91/2025/QH15, on 26 June 2025; it enters into force on 1 January 2026. The PDPL is Vietnam's first statutory (rather than decree-level) personal-data-protection framework, elevating the prior Decree 13/2023/ND-CP (PDPD) regime into a 5-chapter, 39-article primary statute and adding revenue-based administrative penalties of up to 5% of prior-year annual revenue for cross-border data-transfer violations and up to 10x illegal gains for unlawful data trading. The law is implemented by Decree 356/2025/ND-CP (issued 31 December 2025, effective 1 January 2026) and applies extraterritorially to foreign organisations offering services to or processing the personal data of Vietnam residents.

On 25 June 2025 the European Commission adopted COM(2025) 335 final, a proposed Regulation establishing a single market for space activities — the first EU-level framework harmonising the authorisation, registration and supervision of space activities across Member States, replacing 13 fragmented national regimes. The Act rests on three pillars: safety (mandatory tracking of space objects, space- debris mitigation rules, an EU registry of space objects), resilience (cybersecurity requirements scaled to company size and risk profile) and sustainability (environmental impact assessment and active debris-removal R&D). It applies to both EU and non-EU operators providing space services in Europe, giving it extraterritorial reach over SpaceX/Starlink, Amazon Kuiper, OneWeb, Chinese SatNet/G60 and ISRO. The proposal is being negotiated under the ordinary legislative procedure; the Competitiveness Council of 9 December 2025 broadly endorsed its objectives, and the public consultation closed on 7 November 2025.

On 16 June 2025 the Tribunal de Commerce de Bamako issued an order placing Barrick Mining's Loulo-Gounkoto gold complex — one of the world's top-10 gold producers at ~720 koz/yr — under provisional state administration for six months, appointing expert-comptable Soumana Makadji as provisional administrator and tasking state mining holding SOREM-SA with operational oversight. Barrick immediately filed for ICSID arbitration and provisional measures. Operations restarted under state management in Q3 2025. A negotiated settlement dated 24 November 2025 saw Barrick pay approximately USD 430 million to Mali to resolve all disputes; provisional administration was terminated and full operational control returned to Barrick in December 2025.

On 11 June 2025 the Peruvian government published Decreto Supremo N° 003-2025-IN in El Peruano, approving the Estrategia Nacional para la Reducción e Interdicción de la Minería Ilegal en el Perú al 2030. Issued by the Ministerio del Interior (MININTER) and coordinating 17 public institutions, the strategy establishes six specific objectives to dismantle the full criminal chain of illegal mining — from unauthorised extraction through commercialisation of illegally-sourced minerals — across four critical intervention phases. It is institutionally distinct from the parallel MINEM-administered REINFO formalisation track (DS 009-2025-EM + Ley 32537), targeting unregistered illegal operations via PNP, Fiscalía, SUNAT, MINAM, and regional governments, with PCM as the strategy-steering body and a 2030 horizon.

Hong Kong enacted the Inland Revenue (Amendment) (Minimum Tax for Multinational Enterprise Groups) Ordinance 2025 (Ordinance No. 21 of 2025), gazetted on 6 June 2025 after the Legislative Council passed the Bill on 28 May 2025. The Ordinance inserts Part 4AA and Schedules 61–64 into the Inland Revenue Ordinance (Cap. 112), implementing the OECD/G20 Pillar Two GloBE rules for MNE groups with consolidated annual revenue ≥ EUR 750 million in at least two of the four preceding fiscal years. It introduces a 15% Income Inclusion Rule (IIR) and the Hong Kong Minimum Top-up Tax (HKMTT) — a Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax (QDMTT) — effective for fiscal years beginning on or after 1 January 2025; the Undertaxed Profits Rule (UTPR) is deliberately deferred to a date to be specified by gazette notice, completing a structurally phased Pillar Two architecture. IRD estimates additional revenue of approximately HKD 15 billion per year from 2027–28.

Guinea's Mines Minister Bouna Sylla announced on 26 May 2025 the cancellation of 129 exploration permits for gold, bauxite, and diamonds that had expired between 2012 and 2024 and were held by non-compliant companies that had not fulfilled their statutory obligations. The measure is the fourth wave of post-coup mining cadastre cleanup under the CNRD/Doumbouya administration and follows two presidential decrees and a prior ministerial ordinance. Major affected operators include AngloGold Ashanti's Siguiri gold-mine exploration blocks, four gold permits held by Endeavour Mining, and Guinea Alumina Corporation's Nomba bauxite block; Axis International separately filed a USD 28.9 billion ICSID arbitration claim over bauxite-permit revocation in the same wave.

The Hong Kong Legislative Council passed the Stablecoins Ordinance (Cap. 656) on 21 May 2025 (third reading), brought into operation by the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury on 1 August 2025. The Ordinance introduces a mandatory licensing regime administered by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) for any person who issues a fiat-referenced stablecoin (FRS) in Hong Kong, issues an HKD-pegged stablecoin anywhere in the world, or actively markets such issuance to the Hong Kong public. Key requirements include minimum HK$25 million paid-up capital, segregated pools of high-quality liquid reserve assets fully backing circulating supply, mandatory redemption-at-par rights for holders, AML/CFT controls, and broad HKMA enforcement powers including licence suspension, revocation, and financial penalties. A six-month transitional period for existing operators expires 31 January 2026.

Japan's National Diet passed a partial amendment to the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Act (PMD Act / 薬機法) on May 14, 2025, promulgated as Law No. 37 of 2025 on May 21. The amendment requires every Marketing Authorization Holder (MAH) to designate a Supply System Manager responsible for reporting supply disruptions to MHLW, and grants MHLW authority to order replacement of key quality personnel when systemic deficiencies are found. It also reforms GMP oversight to a risk-based inspection model and expands the conditional-approval pathway for rare disease and paediatric drugs. Enforcement is staggered across three tranches: November 2025, May 2026, and final full implementation by May 2027.

Peru's Ministry of Energy and Mines published Decreto Supremo N° 009-2025-EM in El Peruano on 18 May 2025, approving the implementing regulation for Law 32213 (Dec 2024). The decree operationalises the extension of the REINFO mining-formalisation registry deadline through 30 June 2025 (extendable +6 months), reaffirms MINEM as the rector authority over the small-scale and artisanal mining (MAPE) formalisation process, and creates SIPMMA — the Sistema Interoperable de Pequeña Minería y Minería Artesanal — as a state interoperable system for operational traceability of minerals, explosives, chemical inputs and controlled products. A controversial Article 10 had also opened a "REINFO hereditario" path allowing succession transfer of registry inscriptions; that provision was derogated two weeks later by DS 010-2025-EM (1 Jun 2025) under domestic and international anti-illegal-mining pressure.

The Bureau of Industry and Security issued an interim final rule ("Adoption and Procedures of the Section 232 Steel and Aluminum Tariff Inclusions Process," 90 FR 18780, RIN 0694-AK13) adopting the procedural framework directed by Proclamations 10895 and 10896 of 10 February 2025 for adding derivative steel and aluminum articles to the scope of the 25% Section 232 duties. Eligible US producers and industry associations may submit inclusion requests during three two-week windows per year (opening in May, September and January); BIS evaluates each request on a sixty-day clock and publishes a determination memorandum granting or denying inclusion. The rule replaces the legacy product-exclusions architecture with a domestic-producer-driven inclusions architecture, structurally expanding the perimeter of covered tariff lines over time.

On 11 April 2025 President Javier Milei signed Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia 269/2025, published in the Boletín Oficial on 14 April 2025 (edición Nº 35.647). The decree repealed Decreto 28/2023, formally lifting the cepo cambiario — the foreign-exchange restrictions that had been in continuous operation in some form since November 2011. Operative provisions include elimination of the 80/20 export-proceeds-channelling mandate, removal of individual USD purchase and wire-transfer caps, permission for companies to repatriate post-1-January-2025 dividend profits, and replacement of the daily crawling-peg with a band float within a $1,000–$1,400 ARS/USD corridor with BCRA floor/ceiling intervention rules. The measure was coordinated with the IMF Extended Fund Facility (USD 20bn total; USD 15bn 2025 free-availability tranche) approved 11 April 2025, and operationalises the currency-stability guarantee embedded in the RIGI large- investment regime (Law 27.742, July 2024).

Ghana's Parliament passed the Ghana Gold Board Act, 2025 (Act 1140) on 29 March 2025; presidential assent followed on 2 April 2025, with full operational effect from 1 May 2025. The Act repeals PNDCL 219 (1989) and establishes the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) as the sole statutory licensor and exclusive primary buyer, seller, assayer, grader, weigher and exporter of all gold produced by the country's licensed Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) sector. Large-scale mining operations remain outside the monopsony. Effective 1 May 2025, no person other than GoldBod may export ASM gold from Ghana, and all gold trading and marketing businesses must hold a GoldBod licence (application window for Ghanaian-owned firms opened 22 April 2025). Proceeds from all ASM gold exports settle through the Bank of Ghana, channelling foreign-exchange flows from roughly 30% of national gold output — Ghana is the world's #6 producer and Africa's largest — into formal central-bank reserves. The stated objectives are to combat smuggling, capture the smuggling-loss premium for the state, support Bank of Ghana gold-reserves accumulation, and generate foreign exchange. The Act sits alongside the Bank of Ghana's Domestic Gold Purchase Programme as the legal infrastructure for Ghana's gold-as-reserve-asset strategy.

Stortinget adopted Norway's new Minerals Act (Lov om mineralvirksomhet og forvaltning av mineralressurser) on 12 June 2025, replacing the 2009 Minerals Act and entering into force 1 July 2026. The statute introduces a national-security review pillar enabling authorities to deny or condition projects that threaten national preparedness, reduces exploration-licence duration from seven to three years to accelerate project initiation, expands Sámi consultation protections from Finnmark to all traditional Sámi areas (Sápmi), and mandates explicit alignment with the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA, Regulation (EU) 2024/1252). The Act covers Norway's most strategically significant mineral assets including the Fen carbonatite REE field (Europe's largest known REE deposit) and major copper-zinc deposits.

Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/532, adopted 24 March 2025 and published in the Official Journal on 2 July 2025, supplements DORA (Regulation (EU) 2022/2554) with binding Regulatory Technical Standards governing ICT subcontracting of critical or important functions. It requires all EU-regulated financial entities to establish a subcontracting policy, conduct due-diligence and concentration-risk assessments at each tier of the ICT supply chain (including nth-party providers), impose equivalent resilience standards on sub-ICT-providers, and maintain enforceable termination and information-access rights. The RTS entered into force on 22 July 2025, completing the second-batch DORA implementing acts on outsourcing chains.