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

UAE Cabinet Decision No. 142 of 2024, announced 9 December 2024 and formally gazetted 11 February 2025, introduces a Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax (DMTT) on UAE constituent entities of Multinational Enterprise (MNE) groups with consolidated annual revenues ≥ EUR 750 million in at least two of the four preceding fiscal years. The DMTT ensures a 15% minimum effective tax rate (ETR) on UAE-source profits, functioning as a Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax (QDMTT) under the OECD/G20 Pillar Two GloBE framework, thereby giving the UAE first-priority taxing right before any IIR top-up by a parent-jurisdiction authority. The measure applies to fiscal years beginning on or after 1 January 2025. The UAE deliberately excluded the Income Inclusion Rule (IIR) and Under-Taxed Profits Rule (UTPR) from this primary instrument, deferring those to subsequent Cabinet Decisions; the QDMTT-only architecture mirrors Singapore's MEMTA and Switzerland's MindStV as the first-mover design choice for established low-tax financial hubs.

The full Pleno of the Corte Suprema de Justicia of Honduras ruled unanimously on 20 September 2024 that Decree 236-2012 (constitutional amendments enabling the ZEDE regime) and Decree 120-2013 (Organic Law of the ZEDEs) violate the "stone-written" Articles 294, 303, and 329 of the Honduran Constitution, which govern territorial organisation, the justice system, and the economic regime respectively. The court applied a retroactive nullatory effect, treating the ZEDE framework as legally void ab initio (from origin). The ruling was published in La Gaceta No. 36,698 on 25 November 2024, conferring erga omnes legal force; the three operational ZEDEs — Próspera (Roatán), Orquídea (Choluteca), and Ciudad Morazán (Cortés) — are formally without statutory basis under Honduran law. The decision triggers a US$10.7 billion CAFTA-DR ICSID arbitration claim (Próspera v. Honduras; preliminary objections decided 26 February 2025) and sets a constitutional precedent for the cost of retroactive SEZ annulment globally.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) final rule (89 FR 68544; FR Doc 2024-19130) added 123 entities under 131 entries to the Entity List with destinations Russia (63), China (42), Iran (11), Turkey (8), and one each in Canada, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Crimea Region of Ukraine, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates. The dominant rationale is Russia-diversion enforcement: Chinese, Turkish and other third-country firms (e.g., MAK Logistics, Megatek Ltd., Wellgo International, AllChips Limited, Chipgoo Electronics) named for supplying U.S.-origin electronics and dual-use items to Russian industry and military, plus designation of large numbers of Russian military manufacturers (e.g., JSC 75 Arsenal, FSE Aleksinsky Chemical Plant) as military end users. License requirement is "all items subject to the EAR" with policy/presumption of denial; case-by-case for EAR99 food and medicine to certain Russian military end users. Effective on publication 2024-08-27.

The National Assembly of the Lao PDR adopted the amended Law on Investment Promotion (No. 62/NA) on 28 June 2024; it entered into force on 16 December 2024, replacing the 2016 Investment Promotion Law and the 2019 Article-12 amendment. The statute spans 13 parts and 109 articles (62 amended, 32 new) and establishes the foundational legal architecture for domestic and foreign investment in Laos, setting out promotion categories, fiscal-incentive regimes, one-stop-service approval pathways, and investor-protection guarantees. Key reforms tighten the framework for large strategic-sector FDI in mining and hydropower — requiring partial state ownership — while expanding CIT/tax-holiday and customs-duty exemptions by SEZ category and sector-promotion zone. The law operationalises the Investment Promotion and Management Committee (IPMC) as the one-stop regulatory authority, enhancing alignment with the Lao-China Railway-driven Chinese-FDI surge and positioning Laos within the ASEAN horizontal investment-promotion reform wave.

On 20 March 2024 the German Federal Cabinet adopted the Nationale Hafenstrategie, the first comprehensive cross-modal sea-and-inland port strategy succeeding the 2015 Nationales Hafenkonzept. Developed jointly by the federal government, the coastal and inland-port Länder, port industry associations and the ver.di union under BMDV (now BMV) leadership, the strategy is structured around five fields of action and a "living document" measures part containing approximately 140 operative measures. It targets the competitiveness of German sea and inland ports against pressures from the energy transition, Russia's war on Ukraine, post-COVID supply-chain restructuring, Brexit and shifts in world trade.

Canada made SOR/2024-32, Regulations Amending the Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations, registered and effective 2024-02-21 on the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The regulations add 163 persons to Schedule 1 — 10 individuals and 153 entities, predominantly Russian organizations tied to military-industrial production, logistics, insurance and oil-sector support — triggering Canadian dealing/asset bans. A parallel amendment to Schedule 7 adds five new goods categories under the Harmonized System (explosives and pyrotechnics; data-processing units and components; ball and roller bearings; semiconductor manufacturing equipment; optical and navigational instruments), banning their export to Russia or Russian persons.

On 21 February 2024, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed Presidential Decree DP-37 approving the 2024 State Program for the Implementation of the "Uzbekistan-2030" Strategy under the slogan "Year of Support for Youth and Business". The decree converts the parent Uzbekistan-2030 doctrine (DP-158 of 11 September 2023) into binding annual execution targets covering SOE privatisation and IPO programmes (Navoi MMC, Almalyk MMC, Uzbekistan National Investment Fund), industrial localisation, sectoral investment lines, "green economy" and water-management benchmarks, and youth-business support measures. DP-37 functions as the master annual operationalisation instrument for Uzbekistan's 2024 industrial and investment policy stack, anchoring the downstream subsoil recodification (LRU-987, Oct 2024) and critical-minerals national programme (March 2025).