Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

President Trump signed Executive Order 14404, "Imposing Sanctions on Those Responsible for Repression in Cuba and for Threats to United States National Security and Foreign Policy," on 1 May 2026. The order operationalises the country-specific national emergency declared by EO 14380 (29 January 2026) — which had been preserved after the SCOTUS *Learning Resources* vacatur of the IEEPA tariff authority — by establishing a sectoral OFAC blocking regime. Section 2 authorises asset-blocking against any foreign person determined by the Secretary of Treasury (in consultation with State) to operate in Cuba's energy, defense and related materiel, metals and mining, financial services, or security sectors, or "any other sector" subsequently designated. Section 3 suspends entry under INA § 212(f) for covered aliens. Section 4 authorises secondary sanctions against foreign financial institutions that knowingly conduct or facilitate significant transactions for blocked persons, with both correspondent-account and SDN-listing remedies. The EO itself includes no annex of named designations — those are issued by OFAC under separate determinations.

UK Export Finance launched the Critical Goods Export Development Guarantee (Critical Goods EDG), a lending-support scheme that offers an 80% government guarantee on commercial finance for UK-based suppliers of critical minerals to UK exporters. Eligible suppliers must produce at least 50% of their critical-mineral goods for UK exporters (lowered to 20% if the firm also earns at least 5% of turnover from overseas sales), and the mineral must appear on the UK Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre's 2024 criticality assessment or the associated growth-minerals list. The scheme targets commercial lending facilities above £25 million and lets suppliers access the guarantee even if they do not export directly, as long as their output feeds into UK exporters' end products.

Kazakhstan's Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 214-VIII ZRK ("On Taxes and Other Mandatory Payments to the Budget"), signed by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on 18 July 2025 and effective 1 January 2026, replaces the 2017 Tax Code (Code No. 120-VI ZRK) with a wholesale recodification of the Kazakh tax regime. The most consequential IPTM-relevant provision restructures the uranium mineral extraction tax (MET) from a flat 6% rate to a differentiated schedule of 4–18% tiered by annual production volume per subsoil use agreement, supplemented by uranium-price-band surcharges of 0.5–2.5% above $70–$110/lb thresholds. The code also introduces a tenfold MET reduction for processing man-made mineral formations (mining waste / tailings reclamation) to incentivise circular-economy mineral recovery, and for exploration or production licenses issued after 31 December 2026, replaces MET with a tiered royalty regime — ore 13%, concentrate 10%, refined metals 7% — grandfathering existing operating projects under MET. The processing-grade discount (ore → concentrate → metal) is an explicit incentive to push value-added steps onshore within Kazakhstan. Directly material to Kazatomprom (NAC Kazatomprom JSC), the world's largest uranium producer supplying approximately 43% of global output, and to all solid-mineral operators (chromium, copper, zinc, gold) commencing new subsoil use agreements after January 2027.

On 6 February 2026 the Canadian International Trade Tribunal (CITT) found that dumped and subsidized imports of cast iron soil pipe from China have caused material injury to the Canadian domestic industry, triggering collection of definitive duties by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Final anti-dumping duties range from 155.5% to 444.2% of export price by exporter (444.2% for all other exporters), and a flat countervailing (subsidy) duty of 28.5% of export price (equivalent to CNY 1,550.44 per metric tonne) applies to all Chinese exporters. CBSA had initiated the dumping and subsidizing investigation on 11 July 2025 following a complaint from Canada Pipe Company ULC, d.b.a. Bibby-Ste-Croix (Sainte-Croix, Québec), and imposed provisional duties from 9 October 2025 pending the final determination and injury finding.

On 14 January 2026 the Canadian International Trade Tribunal (CITT) found that dumped steel strapping from Türkiye, and dumped and subsidized steel strapping from China, caused material injury to Canada's sole domestic producer, triggering collection of definitive duties by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Final anti-dumping duties of 47.9% of export price apply to all Chinese and Turkish exporters (with three named Chinese exporters carrying that same residual rate per CBSA's final determination), and a countervailing (subsidy) duty of CNY 0.44 per kilogram applies to all Chinese exporters. The Tribunal found dumping volumes from South Korea and Vietnam negligible and terminated those two country inquiries with no measures imposed. CBSA had initiated the investigation on 12 May 2025 following a complaint from JEM Strapping Systems Inc. (Brantford, Ontario), Canada's only domestic steel strapping producer, and had collected provisional duties from 16 September 2025 pending the final determination and injury finding.

Panama's Asamblea Nacional enacted Ley 407 on 3 November 2023, sanctioned by President Laurentino Cortizo Cohen and published in Gaceta Oficial Digital N° 29904 of the same date. The law declares an indefinite moratorium on the granting of concessions for exploration, extraction, transportation, and benefit of metallic mining throughout national territory under the precautionary principle, bars the Ministerio de Comercio e Industrias (MICI) from issuing any new concessions and requires flat rejection of all pending applications from the date of enactment. Ley 407 constitutes the legislative instrument in the paired judicial-legislative architecture under which Panama effectively exits large-scale metals mining: it operates as the prospective, horizontal concession ban, while the Corte Suprema's November 2023 Sentencia (filed separately) is the retrospective judicial nullification of the Cobre Panamá contract. Together they structurally withdraw ~1% of global mined copper supply and affect ~5% of Panama's GDP.