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

Minister of Trade Regulation No. 12 of 2026, signed by Trade Minister Budi Santoso and effective on its date of promulgation (29 April 2026), is the fifth amendment to Permendag 23/2023 on Export Policy and Regulation. It introduces a new discretionary authority — distinct from administrative sanctions — for the Director General of Foreign Trade to suspend issuance of, freeze, and revoke Business Licensing in the Export Sector (Perizinan Berusaha di Bidang Ekspor), and to suspend verification / technical-tracing services. Crucially, it institutionalises cross-ministerial initiating authority: other ministries and agencies may formally propose suspension / freezing / revocation, with proposals reviewed in coordination meetings convened under the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs or the Coordinating Ministry for Food Affairs. Decisions are issued via INATRADE / SINSW with automated notification to exporters. The stated rationale is protecting national interests, public welfare, government-programme implementation, and presidential directives — operationalised as safeguarding domestic supply of "certain goods" (palm oil, rice, sugar, mineral, and fertiliser categories cited in policy framing).

Minister of Trade Regulation No. 6 of 2026 (Permendag 6/2026), signed 26 March 2026 and effective 1 April 2026, amends the appendix of Permendag 22/2023 on Goods Prohibited for Export, making four substantive changes to Indonesia's prohibited-export list: (i) nitrogen-containing mineral and chemical fertilizers, including urea in all forms, are added to the prohibited-export list as a food-security instrument; (ii) rice is removed from the prohibited-export list, partially reversing a long-standing prohibition; (iii) rough wood, sawn wood, and wood carpentry and building products are added as value-added-export-requirement items, extending Indonesia's hilirisasi downstream-processing doctrine from minerals into the forestry-products sector; and (iv) rattan weaving materials remain prohibited for export. Together with the simultaneously enacted Permendag 5/2026 (fourth amendment to Permendag 23/2023 on export-licensing procedures), this forms Indonesia's most consequential 2026 export-regulation package.

President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. signed Executive Order No. 110 on March 24, 2026, declaring a one-year State of National Energy Emergency in response to Middle East supply disruptions, including potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz, that threaten petroleum import flows to the Philippines. The order activates the Unified Package for Livelihoods, Industry, Food, and Transport (UPLIFT), suspends normal procurement requirements for emergency energy acquisition, grants the Department of Energy (DOE) emergency fuel-import authority, and releases a ₱20 billion emergency fund to secure fuel supply. The emergency regime also mandates accelerated renewable-energy transition and promotion of EVs in public transport to reduce long-run import dependency.

The Philippine Department of Agriculture issued Administrative Circular No. 16, Series of 2025, imposing a maximum suggested retail price (MSRP) of PHP 120 per kilogram on imported carrots sold in public and private wet markets within the National Capital Region. The measure took effect 5 December 2025 and was formally circularised 23 December 2025, part of a broader end-2025 MSRP push that also covered pork and onions. It is a domestic price-stabilisation control on an imported staple vegetable rather than a border tariff or quota, but it directly affects the economics of carrot importers and NCR wet-market resellers.

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.

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).

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a final rule amending three sanctions programs. The rule adds a new general license at 31 CFR § 525.512 to the Burma Sanctions Regulations authorizing the provision of agricultural commodities, medicine, medical devices, replacement parts and components for medical devices, and software updates for medical devices to individuals whose property and interests in property are blocked. It also updates the authorities section of the Burma Sanctions Regulations to reflect recent legislation, replaces "the Office of Foreign Assets Control" / "the Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control" with the acronym "OFAC" in three sections of the Sudan Stabilization Sanctions Regulations, and corrects a cross-reference in the Ukraine-/Russia- Related Sanctions Regulations. The rule is effective on publication.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published in the Federal Register (89 FR 16400, FR Doc 2024-04856) two general licenses issued under the Western Balkans Stabilization Regulations (31 CFR Part 588): GL 2 and GL 3. Both were originally issued on 16 November 2023 concurrent with OFAC's initial round of Republika Srpska / Dodik-network designations; the 7 March 2024 Federal Register notice formalises them per the Administrative Procedure Act notice requirements. GL 2 authorises wind-down transactions with newly blocked WBSR entities through 15 March 2024. GL 3 authorises exports and re-exports of agricultural commodities, medicine, medical devices, replacement parts, and services for medical prevention and treatment to WBSR-blocked persons; GL 3 was subsequently superseded by GL 3A on 18 June 2024.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published a final rule in the Federal Register (89 FR 15769, FR Doc 2024-04500) renaming the Darfur Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR Part 546) to the Sudan Stabilization Sanctions Regulations and amending them to implement Executive Order 14098 of May 4, 2023. E.O. 14098 broadened US sanctions authority beyond the Darfur-specific frame to cover all persons destabilising Sudan and undermining democratic transition, responding to the SAF–RSF armed conflict that erupted in April 2023. The rule adds new general licenses covering legal-service payments (§ 546.508), African Union transactions (§ 546.511), and agricultural/medical exports (§ 546.513), and introduces an interpretative provision clarifying that entities are not automatically blocked solely because a blocked individual holds a leadership position.

Signed by President Javier Milei and the entire cabinet on 20 December 2023 and published in the Boletín Oficial extraordinario on 21 December 2023, Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia 70/2023 declares a public emergency across economic, financial, fiscal, administrative, pension, tariff, sanitary, and social matters until 31 December 2025 (Article 1) and enacts 366 articles across 16 titles that fundamentally restructure Argentina's regulatory framework. The DNU repeals or amends dozens of statutes to deregulate foreign trade (repealing the Compre Nacional buy-preference law Ley 18.875 and the price-control framework Ley 27.345), opens privatisation of state enterprises (Aerolíneas Argentinas, ENARSA, Banco Nación, Correo Argentino, Trenes Argentinos), dismantles the Ley de Abastecimiento price-control regime, liberalises civil aviation cabotage to foreign carriers, deregulates hydrocarbons export and mining permitting, and replaces the severance-pay regime with a capitalisation-fund system. It is the foundational enabling framework for all subsequent Milei-administration deregulatory instruments filed on the IPTM register, including RIGI (Law 27.742), Decreto 38/2025, Decreto 449/2025, and Decreto 563/2025.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, adopted 31 May 2023 and in force 29 June 2023, requires all EU operators and traders placing seven in-scope commodities and their derived products on the EU market — or exporting them from the EU — to file due-diligence statements certifying that goods are deforestation-free (no land cleared after 31 December 2020) and produced in compliance with the relevant legislation of the country of origin. A Commission-administered risk-classification system assigns producer countries to low, standard, or high-risk tiers with differentiated due-diligence burdens. Application was subsequently postponed twice: to 30 December 2026 for large operators (Reg (EU) 2024/3234 and Reg (EU) 2025/2650).

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.).

Sri Lanka's Imports and Exports (Control) Regulations No. 07 of 2021, published as Gazette Extraordinary No. 2226/48 on 6 May 2021, banned the import of mineral and chemical fertilisers and placed agrochemicals (pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides and plant-growth regulators) under a Special Import Licence requirement, applying to shipments with bills of lading issued on or after 6 May 2021. The measure operationalised the government's declared policy of converting Sri Lanka to fully organic agriculture. Facing a sharp drop in crop yields and food insecurity, the government repealed the restrictions from 30 November 2021.