Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2670 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính issued Directive 38/CĐ-TTg on 5 May 2026, mobilising a cross-ministerial enforcement campaign against intellectual property infringement running 7–30 May 2026 with a 31 May reporting deadline. The directive explicitly responds to the USTR 2026 Special 301 designation of Vietnam as a Priority Foreign Country — the first such designation in eleven years — which triggers a statutory 30-day window for USTR to decide whether to open a Section 301 investigation. Ministries of Public Security, Industry and Trade (Market Surveillance), Information and Communications, and Culture are mobilised for coordinated raids targeting counterfeit-goods exporters, pirated-content platforms, and software-copyright violators, with the Prime Minister signalling enforcement will be permanent rather than a one-off campaign.

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).

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.

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.