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

On 26 May 2026 the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), part of HM Treasury, imposed a £1,000,920.59 monetary penalty on Sabre Global Technologies Limited (SGTL), a UK-registered travel-technology firm, for repeated breaches of UK financial sanctions. SGTL continued to provide Russian carrier Ural Airlines access to its Global Distribution System (GDS) service for seven months after Ural Airlines was designated by the UK in May 2022, and during July–August 2022 actively explored routing payments through a US bank account to avoid detection by its UK bank — the conduct that makes this the **first OFSI penalty issued for a circumvention offence**. At £1,000,921 this is also OFSI's **largest financial-sanctions penalty since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine**, surpassing the prior record (HSF £465k).

Premier Li Qiang signed State Council Order No. 839 on 20 May 2026, promulgating the "Regulations for the Implementation of the Mineral Resources Law of the People's Republic of China" (8 chapters, 79 articles), effective 15 June 2026. The Regulations are the primary implementing instrument for the revised Mineral Resources Law and establish a unified governance architecture across the entire mineral value chain — exploration, production, processing, stockpiling, and emergency supply mobilisation — with inter-agency coordination spanning MNR, NDRC, MIIT, the State Grain and Material Reserves Administration, NEA, and the State Administration of Mine Safety. The Regulations introduce a three-layer strategic reserve system (physical stockpiles, production-capacity reserves, and in-ground strategic areas), grant the state authority to directly organise mining and distribution during supply emergencies (Article 59), and explicitly authorise countermeasures against nations that restrict China's access to mineral supply chains (Article 76).

Peru's Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINEM) issued Decreto Supremo N° 002-2026-EM on 5 March 2026, modifying Decreto Supremo N° 017-2018-EM (Reglamento del Mecanismo de Racionamiento de Gas Natural) to establish a binding six-tier priority order for natural gas allocation whenever the rationing mechanism is formally activated during declared energy emergencies. Tiers prioritise residential and regulated commercial consumers at the top, followed by CNG vehicle/public-transport stations, regulated industrial consumers by volume threshold, independent consumers with firm contracts, and interruptible-contract holders at the base. The decree imposes binding obligations on natural-gas producers, pipeline-transport concessionaires, distribution concessionaires, and LNG-plant operators to optimise production and supply during declared emergencies, with Osinergmin empowered to grant temporary regulatory exemptions. The decree was triggered by the 2 March 2026 Megantini district rupture of Transportadora de Gas del Perú's (TGP) main Camisea pipeline, which reduced supply to approximately 9–10% of normal capacity and forced Cálidda (Lima/Callao distributor) to cut gas to 850 industrial users and all thermal power plants.

President Trump signed Executive Order 14387 on 18 February 2026, invoking Section 101 of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to ensure an adequate domestic supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides. The order delegates DPA §101 priority-allocation and contract- direction authority to the Secretary of Agriculture, authorises USDA to direct the production and distribution of these inputs for national-defense purposes, and grants legal immunity to domestic producers acting in compliance with USDA directives. The EO is the first DPA invocation specifically targeting the phosphorus supply chain, reflecting the concentration of global white/yellow phosphorus production in China (~75% share) and the existence of only a single operating US producer.

The Cabinet Secretary for Mining, Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs promulgated the Mining (Mineral Royalty Sharing) Regulations, 2026 (Legal Notice No. 3 of 2026) under section 183 of the Mining Act 2016 (No. 12 of 2016), published on 29 January 2026 in the Kenya Law database. The regulations establish the intergovernmental and community architecture for distributing mineral royalties collected under the parent Act: 70% to the national Consolidated Fund, 20% to the relevant County Revenue Fund Account(s), and 10% to a dedicated Community Mineral Royalties Account held in trust for host communities. This is the executive's procedural cure following the September 2025 High Court ruling that voided the 2024 Royalty Collection and Management Regulations (LN 106/2024) for inadequate public participation; LN 3/2026 focuses solely on distribution architecture and is therefore structurally distinct from the collection mechanics of its predecessor.

On 3 December 2025 the European Commission adopted the RESourceEU Action Plan (COM(2025) 945 final), a horizontal critical-raw-materials supply-security instrument complementing the 2023 Critical Raw Materials Act. The plan mobilises €3 billion in EU funds within twelve months for priority CRM projects, creates a European Critical Raw Materials Centre operational from 2026 (modelled on Japan's JOGMEC) acting as portfolio manager for diversified supply chains, joint purchasing and stockpiling, and activates the Internal Market Emergency and Resilience Act (IMERA) "vigilance" and "emergency" modes from May 2026 with mandatory information requests, priority deliveries and coordinated stockpile distribution. A targeted CRMA amendment expands product labelling for permanent-magnet recycling and adds export controls on permanent-magnet and aluminium scrap. Targets a 30-50% reduction by 2029 in single-country dependency for battery, rare-earth and defence raw-material value chains.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) entered into an $11,485,352 settlement with IPI Partners, LLC — a US private-equity data-center fund manager (~$10.5bn AUM) — to resolve 51 apparent violations of the Ukraine-/Russia-Related Sanctions Regulations between July 2018 and June 2022. IPI solicited and accepted two $25 million fund subscriptions in September 2017 and March 2018 from Definition Services, Inc. — a British Virgin Islands entity ultimately owned by Heritage Trust, a Delaware family trust established by sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov — and continued processing 18 capital calls, 20 distributions, and 13 management-fee payments for four years after Kerimov's April 2018 SDN designation. OFAC simultaneously issued an unusually direct sectoral warning to the private-equity industry, marking the first major OFAC enforcement against a US PE-fund administrator in the data-center / AI-infrastructure segment and the second Kerimov-linked PE/VC settlement of 2025 (after the June 2025 $216M GVA Capital statutory-maximum penalty).

Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) announced the K-Shipbuilding Strategy for Next-Generation Market Dominance on 15 November 2025 at the emergency economy ministerial meeting and exports-and-investment promotion meeting. The strategy deploys KRW 710 billion (~USD 534 million) by 2028 across three policy directions: (1) technology super-gap via autonomous self-navigating vessels, zero-emission ships (LNG/ammonia/hydrogen tri-fuel), and AI-driven design and smart shipbuilding; (2) manufacturing upgrade through smart shipyard investment, robotics distribution, and improved foreign-manpower visa pathways; and (3) legal infrastructure including a new dedicated "Promotion of Industrialization and Technological Innovation of the Next-Generation Shipbuilding Industry" Act. Korea's overarching target is to capture ≥80% of the next-generation shipbuilding market, explicitly in competition with China's state-subsidised fleet expansion.

On 30 October 2025, Brazil's National Monetary Council (CMN) approved a resolution regulating the use of up to BRL 4 billion (~USD 746 million) from the National Civil Aviation Fund (Fundo Nacional de Aviação Civil, FNAC) for below-market-rate loans to scheduled air-transport providers. The program comprises six credit lines — covering sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) purchases, aircraft and engine maintenance, aircraft acquisition and advance payment, and logistics infrastructure — at interest rates of 6.5-7.5% per year, with disbursement formalised via a BNDES contract in December 2025. Airlines drawing on the funds must accept counterpart obligations: an accelerated SAF blending trajectory (1 percentage point per year toward a 10% target, ahead of the legal mandate), a 30% increase in regional flights to the Legal Amazon and Northeast versus 2024 levels, and a freeze on shareholder dividend distributions during the loan grace period.

Paraguay promulgated Ley Nº 7548/2025 on 8 September 2025, establishing a modernised fiscal-incentive regime for national and foreign investment that replaces the 35-year-old Ley 60/90 framework. The statute extends IDU (dividend-distribution tax) exemptions to domestic investors — equalising treatment with foreign-owned enterprises for the first time — and provides customs-duty and VAT exemptions on capital goods, raw materials, and inputs for qualifying investment projects approved via bi-ministerial resolution by MIC and MEF. The law is the third pillar of Paraguay's September 2025 industrial-policy reset, companion to Ley 7546/2025 (electronics sector strategy) and Ley 7547/2025 (maquila regime overhaul), and anchors the Peña administration's FDI-promotion architecture with explicit fiscal-stability guarantees and tiered regional/sectoral premium support.

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.

On 22 June 2025, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet ordered an immediate and complete halt of all fuel and gas imports from Thailand, effective from midnight that night (00:00, 23 June 2025). The order came amid a rapidly escalating Cambodia-Thailand border dispute following the killing of a Cambodian soldier in a disputed border area the previous month, and followed Cambodia's closure of two land border checkpoints with Thailand the same day. Thailand exported an estimated 2.3 billion litres of fuel to Cambodia in 2024 — about 20% of Thailand's total fuel exports, worth roughly THB 48 billion (USD 1.5 billion) — making Cambodia one of the largest overseas markets for Thai state energy company PTT. Hun Manet stated Cambodian fuel importers have adequate capacity to source supply from alternative countries, and separately ordered strict legal penalties, including licence revocation, against any company found smuggling Thai-origin fuel into Cambodia.

Indonesia issued Government Regulation (Peraturan Pemerintah) No. 8 of 2025 on Foreign-Exchange Proceeds from Natural-Resource Exports (DHE SDA), amending PP No. 36/2023. President Prabowo Subianto announced the policy at Merdeka Palace on 17–18 February 2025 and the regulation takes effect on 1 March 2025. It mandates that exporters of non-oil- and-gas mining, plantation, forestry, and fisheries products with export-proceeds value of USD 250,000 or more per shipment retain 100 percent of those foreign-exchange proceeds inside Indonesia's financial system for 12 months — sharply up from the prior 30 percent for 3 months under PP 36/2023. Oil-and-gas exporters remain on the earlier 30 percent / 3-month regime. Permitted in-period uses include rupiah conversion at the holding bank, payment of state obligations in foreign currency, dividend distribution, payment for imported raw materials and capital goods unavailable domestically, and servicing of foreign-currency capital-expenditure loans. Non-compliance carries administrative sanctions including suspension of export services. The government has projected the measure could lift retained foreign- exchange proceeds by USD 80 billion in 2025 and over USD 100 billion on a full 12-month basis.

Bahrain's Ministry of Industry and Commerce issued Decision No. 53 of 2024, amending the conditions governing foreign ownership in commercial activities, effective 18 October 2024. The reform permits 100% foreign ownership of commercial enterprises — including wholesale and retail trade and authorized distribution — without a mandatory Bahraini local partner, where the foreign company operates in at least 10 countries or generates annual revenue above EUR 750 million. It simultaneously reduces the minimum capital requirement for foreign-owned companies in Bahrain by 95%, from BHD 2,000,000 (~EUR 5m) to BHD 100,000 (~EUR 240,000), materially expanding the addressable foreign-investor pool to mid-market commercial enterprises.

Directive (EU) 2024/1760, adopted 13 June 2024 and entering into force 25 July 2024, imposes binding human-rights and environmental due-diligence obligations on large in-scope EU and non-EU companies across their chains of activities (upstream supply chain, own operations, and a limited part of downstream distribution). In-scope companies must identify, prevent, mitigate, and bring to an end actual and potential adverse human-rights and environmental impacts — covering forced labour, child labour, hazardous chemicals, and biodiversity loss — with obligations phased in from FY 2027 (EU companies with >5 000 employees and >EUR 1.5 bn turnover) through FY 2029 (>1 000 employees and >EUR 450 m). Companies must also adopt a climate transition plan compatible with the Paris Agreement 1.5 °C pathway (Art 22), and face civil liability for damages in national courts (Art 29); the original transposition deadline of 26 July 2026 was postponed and scope narrowed by the EU Omnibus I package (Directive 2026/470).

Mongolia's State Great Khural adopted Resolution No. 62 on 5 June 2024, mandating the government to implement sixteen specific reforms following a parliamentary audit of the Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority of Mongolia (MRPAM)'s performance in issuing special permits, collecting royalties, and enforcing taxes over the 2018-2023 period. The audit identified approximately MNT 1.1 trillion in uncollected mineral-extraction royalties and systemic weaknesses in licence management, illegal-mining enforcement, and strategic-deposit benefit distribution. The resolution directs the government to review and amend the Minerals Law, Strategic Deposits Law, and Oyu Tolgoi Investment Agreement frameworks by spring 2025, reform royalty calculation methodologies, and ensure strategic mineral revenues flow equitably to Mongolian citizens. Resolution 62 is the foundational parliamentary mandate driving Mongolia's 2024-25 minerals-regime reform cycle, providing the upstream political basis for subsequently enacted instruments including the Critical Minerals Support Law (January 2025), the Erdenes Critical Minerals SOE renaming (February 2025), and the Mining Product Exchange royalty-pricing shift (October 2025).

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), enacted as Division H of P.L. 118-50 (21st Century Peace through Strength Act), prohibits app stores and internet hosting services from distributing, maintaining, or updating "foreign adversary controlled applications" — defined explicitly to include ByteDance Ltd and its subsidiaries (TikTok). ByteDance was given 270 days from enactment (until January 19, 2025) to execute a "qualified divestiture" — selling TikTok to an owner with no operational relationship with a foreign adversary — or face a nationwide distribution ban. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law's constitutionality in TikTok, Inc. v. Garland (January 17, 2025), rejecting First Amendment challenges and affirming the national-security rationale grounded in data-collection concerns.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security added 14 entities across Russia, Germany, and Switzerland to the Entity List under 15 CFR Part 744, effective March 4, 2021. Ten Russian entities — including the 27th Scientific Center of the Russian Ministry of Defense (associated with Russia's chemical weapons activities) and nine members of the Chimmed Group distribution network (Chimmed Group, Femteco, Interlab, LabInvest, OOO Analit Products, OOO Intertech Instruments, Pharmcontract GC, Rau Farm, Regionsnab) — were listed for proliferation activities supporting Russia's WMD programs. Three German entities (Chimconnect GmbH, Pharmcontract GmbH, Riol-Chemie) and one Swiss entity (Chimconnect AG) were simultaneously listed as foreign-front nodes in the same procurement network. A license is required for all EAR-subject items; no license exceptions apply. The rule also corrects six pre-existing entries (one Germany, five China).