Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2665 actions· ✨ 90 recent

On 29 February 2024 Switzerland's WBF decided to align with the EU's 13th Russia sanctions package by amending the Ordinance on Measures in Connection with the Situation in Ukraine (SR 946.231.176.72), effective 1 March 2024 at 18:00 CET. The amendment adds over 100 individuals and nearly 90 entities — mainly Russian military-industrial-complex firms and suppliers of DPRK-sourced weapons to Russia — to the asset-freeze and designation lists, and extends the dual-use/military-technology export ban to 27 additional companies believed to be circumventing existing controls.

On 22 January 2024, Brazil's National Council for Industrial Development (CNDI), reactivated by President Lula in 2023, launched Nova Indústria Brasil (NIB) — Brazil's first comprehensive national industrial policy since the 2011-2014 Plano Brasil Maior. The framework commits roughly R$300 billion (~USD 60 billion) in financing through 2026, distributed across loans, non-refundable grants and equity participations administered by BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank), Finep (Research and Projects Financing Company) and Embrapii (Brazilian Industrial Research and Innovation Company), with quantitative targets running to 2033. The R$300bn envelope combines R$106bn announced at the first CNDI meeting in July 2023 with R$194bn redirected from existing budget lines. NIB is structured around six "missions": (1) sustainable and digital agro-industrial chains, (2) health-industrial complex resilience (medicines, vaccines, devices), (3) urban infrastructure and green mobility, (4) digital transformation and Industry 4.0 including semiconductors, (5) bioeconomy and energy transition, and (6) defence, sovereignty and national-security technologies. Two presidential decrees signed the same day establish local-content preferences for New PAC public-procurement bids and create an Interministerial Public Procurement Commission. As of February 2025, BNDES had approved R$220bn in NIB-aligned operations, and the plan has anchored downstream sectoral programmes including Brasil Semicon, the Mover automotive programme and Mais Inovação.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added 37 entities under 38 entries to the Entity List, effective March 2, 2023, spanning six destinations: China (28), Pakistan (4), Burma (3), Russia (1), Belarus (1), and Taiwan (1). The China tranche — the largest — targets entities supporting the People's Liberation Army's military modernization, including BGI Research and Forensic Genomics International (genomic surveillance/data risk), Inspur Group Co. Ltd. (cloud servers supplied to Chinese military), and Loongson Technology (domestic CPU developer). Three Burmese entities, including the Ministry of Transport and Communications, are designated for providing surveillance equipment enabling the military junta's tracking and targeting of civilians. Pakistani entities Abdul Razaq Asim, Add-On Technology, and Dynamic Engineers are added for contributing to Pakistan's ballistic missile programs; Russian DMT Electronics and Belarusian DMT Trading LLC for export-control evasion. All listed entities are subject to a license requirement for all items subject to the EAR, with the review policy being presumption of denial for the majority of Chinese entries.

Switzerland's Federal Council amended the Ordinance on measures related to the situation in Ukraine (SR 946.231.176.72) to align with the EU's ninth sanctions package, effective 6pm on 25 January 2023. The amendment bans new Swiss investment, equity provision, and participation (including joint ventures) in Russian mining-sector entities, with a carve-out for critical raw materials (aluminium/bauxite, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron ore, mineral fertilisers, molybdenum, nickel, palladium, rhodium, scandium, titanium, vanadium). It also extends export bans on aerospace goods to aircraft and drone engines, adds new controls on dual-use and military/security-enhancement goods, bans product testing/advertising/market-research services to Russia, and designates roughly 200 additional individuals and entities, including the Russian Regional Development Bank, to frozen-asset lists.

On 16 December 2022 the Council of the European Union adopted Council Regulation (EU) 2022/2474, the 9th package of restrictive measures against Russia, amending Regulation (EU) 833/2014. It entered into force on publication the following day (17 December 2022). The package extends the prohibition on new EU investment from the Russian energy sector to the Russian mining and quarrying sector, bans exports of aircraft and drone engines and their parts to Russia (and to any third country that could re-supply drones to Russia), adds 168 entities to the sectoral export- control annex covering chemicals, nerve agents, night-vision and radio- navigation equipment, electronics and IT components, and prohibits EU advertising, market-research, product-testing and technical-inspection services to Russia. A parallel Council Decision/Implementing Regulation designated a further 141 individuals and 49 entities to the EU asset-freeze and travel-ban list.

Council Regulation (EU) 2022/2372, adopted 24 October 2022, establishes a binding framework empowering HERA (Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority) to activate emergency supply measures for crisis-relevant medical countermeasures — vaccines, therapeutics, PPE, medical devices, and in-vitro diagnostics — when a public health emergency at Union level is declared under Regulation (EU) 2022/2371. Emergency-mode powers include joint procurement on behalf of Member States, mandatory information requests to manufacturers on stockpiles and production capacity, accelerated R&D funding under the Emergency Research and Innovation Plan, and Union-level stockpile authority. This is the foundational binding instrument for the EU's post-COVID medical supply-chain resilience architecture; it is referenced by every subsequent EU pharma-resilience initiative including the Critical Medicines Act proposal (2025) and the 2025 MCM Strategy.

Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act, DSA) was adopted by the European Parliament and Council on 19 October 2022, published in OJ L 277 on 27 October 2022, entered into force on 16 November 2022, and applied in full from 17 February 2024 (with VLOP/VLOSE obligations applying from 25 August 2023 following the Commission's initial designation letters of February 2023). The DSA establishes a graduated intermediary-liability and platform-safety framework covering all online intermediaries serving EU users, with the heaviest obligations falling on designated Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs, ≥45m monthly active EU users) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs): systemic-risk assessments, annual independent audits, vetted-researcher data access, recommender-system transparency, online-advertising transparency, and crisis-response cooperation mechanisms under Commission coordination. The European Commission holds exclusive enforcement authority over VLOPs and VLOSEs, with fines up to 6% of global turnover. The DSA is the structural twin-pillar to the Digital Markets Act (Reg (EU) 2022/1925): the DMA governs ex-ante competition obligations on designated gatekeepers; the DSA governs ex-post intermediary-liability, content-moderation, and platform-safety obligations across all online intermediaries.

The Bureau of Industry and Security added 57 entities under 57 entries to the Entity List, effective September 30, 2022, in direct response to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine and its illegal annexation of Ukrainian regions. Of the 57 entities, 56 are listed under Russia and one (Subsidiary Sevastopol Naval Plant of Zvezdochka Shipyard) under the Crimea Region of Ukraine. The additions span aviation repair and overhaul facilities, aerospace R&D institutes, naval propulsion, ballistic-missile producers, advanced-materials and quantum science institutes, and the federal metrology agency; 50 of the 57 receive footnote 3 designations as Russian military end users, subjecting them to the Russia/Belarus-Military End User Foreign Direct Product Rule. All are added with a license review policy of denial for all EAR-subject items except food and medicine designated EAR99.

The U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added seven Chinese entities — under seven entries — to the Entity List, effective August 24, 2022, for acquiring or attempting to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of China's military modernization efforts. The entities span China's state-owned aerospace, space-technology, electronics, and control-systems research institutes. All seven entries carry a license requirement covering all items subject to the EAR, with a presumption-of-denial review policy.

Regulation (EU) 2022/868 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2022 on European data governance — the Data Governance Act (DGA) — was published in the Official Journal on 3 June 2022, entered into force on 23 June 2022, and became fully applicable on 24 September 2023. The DGA is the second pillar of the EU data-economy framework (alongside GDPR for personal data and the Data Act 2023/2854 for industrial/IoT data) and establishes four structural mechanisms: (i) a harmonised public-sector data re-use regime for protected data held by public-sector bodies; (ii) a mandatory notification and structural-separation regime for data-intermediation service providers; (iii) a voluntary recognition framework for data-altruism organisations (RDAOs); and (iv) the European Data Innovation Board (EDIB) to co-ordinate national competent authorities and advise on common European data spaces and interoperability standards. The regulation is the foundational parent statute of the existing French SREN law filing (2024-05-21) and functions as enabling legislation for the EU's sectoral common-data-space programme (Health, Agriculture, Finance, Mobility, Green Deal, Energy, etc.).

The Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added 91 entities (across 96 entries) to the Entity List under 15 CFR Part 744, in direct response to Russia's further invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The listed entities span ten destinations — Belize, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Malta, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom — and include Russian military research institutes, shipbuilding facilities, aerospace and electronics manufacturers, and suspected front companies in third countries used to circumvent EAR controls. A license is required for all items subject to the EAR; the review policy is denial for 86 entities and case-by-case (for US Government-supported space programs) for five.

BIS published an interim final rule on October 21, 2021 establishing new Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCNs 4A005, 4D004, 4E001.c, and 5A001.j) for intrusion software systems, command-and-control platforms, and IP network surveillance tools, implementing the Wassenaar Arrangement 2017 cybersecurity decisions into the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). The rule simultaneously created License Exception ACE (Authorized Cybersecurity Exports), codified at § 740.22, to authorize exports to most destinations while imposing licence requirements — or outright prohibitions — for sales to Country Groups E:1/E:2 governments and certain D-group government end-users. Carve-outs for vulnerability disclosure and cyber-incident-response activities were included to protect legitimate security research. The effective date was subsequently delayed from January 19, 2022 to March 7, 2022 by a separate interim rule (FR 2022-00448), and the rule was finalized with revisions on May 26, 2022 (FR 2022-11282).

On 6 October 2021 the governors of Salta, Jujuy and Catamarca signed an interprovincial treaty creating the "Región Minera del Litio" (Lithium Mining Region) across their shared salar basins, establishing a joint Comité Regional del Litio to coordinate provincial policy on lithium research, extraction, production, industrialisation and commercialisation, and to present unified investment terms to the national government and foreign investors. Each province separately ratified the treaty into provincial law: Salta via Ley N° 8.289 (Decreto N° 905/21, published in the Boletín Oficial on 22 December 2021), Jujuy via Ley N° 6.278, and Catamarca via Ley N° 5.756.

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).

The US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added 47 entities across 51 entries to the EAR Entity List effective 22 September 2020, covering entities in China, Hong Kong, Iran, Pakistan, Canada, Malaysia, Oman, Thailand, Turkey, the UAE, and the UK. All 47 entities were determined to be acting contrary to US national security or foreign policy interests. For 39 of the 47 entities BIS imposed a license requirement for all EAR-subject items with a presumption-of-denial review policy; the remaining eight face case-by-case review. The round targeted Iranian dual-use procurement networks, Chinese military-affiliated research institutes, and Pakistan-linked proliferators, reinforcing the layered export-control perimeter across multiple adversary programs simultaneously.

Loi n° 2014-138, adopted by the Assemblée nationale and promulgated by President Alassane Ouattara on 24 March 2014, is the foundational mining-rights statute governing all mineral prospecting, research, and exploitation in Côte d'Ivoire. Its 197 articles across 16 titles repeal the prior Loi n° 95-553 (1995 Code Minier) and establish the modern permit regime, a 10% state free-carry in all industrial mining projects via SODEMI, and the royalty + ad valorem fiscal architecture that underpins every subsequent mining-convention and fiscal-law amendment. As West Africa's second-largest gold producer (approx. 45 t/yr) with growing bauxite and manganese exploration, CI's mining-code architecture is a material determinant of supply-chain access for Western and Chinese industrial consumers of these commodities.