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

Türkiye imposed a provisional WTO safeguard measure on imports of PET resin (polyethylene terephthalate, viscosity ≥78 ml/g, GTİP 3907.61.00.00.00) via Presidential Decision No. 10806, published in the Official Gazette on 31 December 2025 (Sayı 33124, 5. Mükerrer) alongside the implementing "İthalatta Korunma Önlemlerine İlişkin Tebliğ" (Tebliğ No. 2026/1). The measure levies an additional financial obligation of USD 100 per tonne, applied erga omnes for up to 200 days while the Ministry's full safeguard investigation continues. A tariff-quota carve-out exempts eligible developing-country origins meeting the WTO Safeguards Agreement Article 9 de-minimis threshold (individually ≤3% of 2024 imports, collectively ≤9%): roughly 3,693 tonnes per country and 11,079 tonnes in aggregate are admitted duty-free before the $100/tonne obligation applies to the remainder. Leading 2024 PET resin suppliers to Türkiye include China, South Korea and Italy.

On 26 December 2025, Japan's Cabinet approved the FY2026 (Reiwa 8) national budget, which creates a new JPY 3.0 billion (~USD 20m) financial-grant line, the "Business Commercialisation Promotion Project for Combinate Regeneration under the GX Strategic Regional System" (GX戦略地域制度におけるコンビナート 等再生に向けた事業化促進事業), administered by METI. The single-year (FY2026 only) grant funds feasibility work -- project-cost and profitability evaluation, investment-decision support for new operators, and off-taker matching -- for redeveloping idle or underused industrial-complex ("combinate") sites into new GX-aligned industrial clusters. It is one of four categories under METI's GX Strategic Regional System, alongside data-centre aggregation, decarbonized-power utilisation, and decarbonized- power regional-contribution types (the last already filed separately in this register). The programme takes effect with Japan's fiscal year on 1 April 2026.

The UK Department for Business and Trade, alongside HM Treasury, the Prime Minister's Office and the Scotland Office, announced a GBP 125 million support package for INEOS Olefins & Polymers UK's Grangemouth site, comprising a GBP 75 million government-backed loan guarantee and a GBP 50 million grant. The package forms part of a wider GBP 150 million joint investment with INEOS to fund energy-efficiency upgrades, carbon-emission reductions and productivity improvements at the ethylene production facility, protecting around 500 on-site jobs plus supply-chain roles. Funds are restricted to site-improvement uses and the government retains a right to share in future profits.

On 9 October 2025, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated more than 50 individuals, entities and vessels for facilitating Iranian crude oil, petroleum-product and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) exports, in a coordinated action with the State Department. The network included 33 vessels transporting Iranian crude and LPG, shipping entities registered in Panama, the Marshall Islands, Ukraine and Liberia, an Iranian petrochemical producer, four Turkish petrochemical trading entities, five Chinese entities importing/refining/storing Iranian petroleum (including a China-based petrochemical-terminal operator, Jiangyin Foreversun Chemical Logistics Co., Ltd.), three Singapore-based logistics entities, and 27 entities based in Hong Kong, the UAE and India engaged in trading and shipping. The action was taken pursuant to the National Security Presidential Memorandum 2 (NSPM-2) maximum-pressure campaign against Iran and blocks all US property/interests of the designated parties, exposing non-US counterparties to secondary-sanctions risk.

On 3 September 2025 South Korea's Financial Services Commission announced an expanded KRW 1 trillion (approx. USD 720 million) Corporate Restructuring Fund No.6 (기업구조혁신펀드 6호), scaling up from the KRW 500 billion originally budgeted in the 2025 first supplementary budget. The fund targets marginal ("한계기업") companies in six export-oriented key industries — petrochemicals, steel, automotive, semiconductors, displays and secondary batteries — whose financial position is deteriorating due to recent US tariff actions. KAMCO ran a fund-manager recruitment call from 3-24 September 2025, selecting four operators to run blind funds, with formation targeted for October 2025. At least 60% of raised capital must be invested in the six target industries, and the subordinated (first-loss) capital contribution ratio was raised from 5% to 10% versus prior restructuring funds to attract private co-investment.

On 4 August 2025, the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) signed a USD 1.35 billion financing facility in favour of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), acting as Mandated Lead Arranger within a larger approximately USD 4 billion syndicated facility. The financing refinances capital expended on constructing the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals Complex — the world's largest single-train refinery at 650,000 barrels per day — alleviating initial operating expenditure and strengthening DIL's balance sheet. Global Trade Alert logs the transaction as a state-linked loan intervention given Afreximbank's supranational, treaty-based public-development-finance mandate.

On 8 July 2025 the European Commission adopted Communication COM(2025) 530 final, the "European Chemicals Industry Action Plan", together with companion staff-working document SWD(2025) 191. The Plan launches a Critical Chemicals Alliance (CCA) of Member States and industry stakeholders to safeguard EU production of strategic base chemicals (ammonia, urea, ethylene, propylene, methanol, chlorine, silicon and other high-volume building blocks) against capacity closures driven by structurally high energy/feedstock costs and third-country oversupply. The package combines (i) accelerated trade-defence on imports of PVC, melamine, glyoxylic acid, ethanolamines and polyols plus extension of the Combined Safeguard Mechanism into chemicals; (ii) energy-cost relief through swift implementation of the Affordable Energy Action Plan and an indirect-CBAM offset for chemicals exposed to high-energy input costs; (iii) a 6th Omnibus simplification package overhauling REACH, CLP labelling, cosmetics and fertilising-product rules with claimed industry savings of at least €363m/year; (iv) a framework for a follow-on Critical Chemicals Act and PFAS restrictions preserving critical applications. The chemicals sector covers ~29,000 EU companies, 1.2m direct jobs, and ~19m dependent supply-chain jobs.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced a $3,882,797 civil settlement with Unicat Catalyst Technologies LLC, an Alvin, Texas-based specialty catalyst supplier, resolving 13 apparent violations of the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR, 31 CFR Part 560) and one apparent violation of the Venezuela Sanctions Regulations (VSR, 31 CFR Part 591). OFAC determined the conduct egregious; Unicat had voluntarily self-disclosed. The settlement was concurrent with separate actions by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). The violations, spanning 2016–2021, involved the supply of catalyst products and consulting services to Iranian customers via a Dutch affiliate and Chinese supplier, and the sale of catalysts to Orinoco Iron S.C.S., a blocked Venezuelan government-owned entity, routed through a Chinese intermediary.

Pakistan's Federal Cabinet approved the National Tariff Policy 2025-30 (NTP 2025-30) in June 2025, with operative tariff reforms incorporated into the Finance Act 2025 effective 1 July 2025. The NTP restructures Pakistan's customs duty (CD) slab architecture from five slabs (0/3/11/16/20%) to four flatter slabs (0/5/10/15%) by FY2029-30, while phasing out Regulatory Duties (RDs) and Additional Customs Duties (ACDs) on 7,000+ tariff lines over four to five years. The policy targets cutting the trade-weighted average tariff from ~10.6% to below 6% and the simple-average tariff from 19% to 9.5% by 2030, underpinned by GTAP projections of 10–14% export growth and 5–6% import growth. Prepared in coordination with IMF technical assistance under the USD 7 billion EFF, the NTP is the statutory anchor for the sequence of Finance-Act SRO-based sectoral tariff revisions covering textiles/MMF, iron-and-steel, and chemicals/intermediates through FY2029-30.

Indonesia's Ministry of Finance extended for a second three-year term the import safeguard duty (Bea Masuk Tindakan Pengamanan / BMTP) on expansible polystyrene (EPS) resin (HS 3903.11.10), via Peraturan Menteri Keuangan (PMK) No. 29 of 2025, effective 23 May 2025 to 22 May 2028. The extension follows a KPPI investigation opened 22 July 2024 that found the domestic industry still needed time to complete structural adjustment despite a fall in import volumes. The duty is a specific (per-kilogram) levy declining annually and applies to all source countries, principally Taiwan, China and Vietnam.

On 30 April 2025 the US Department of State designated seven entities and identified two vessels as blocked property for facilitating trade in Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products, under Executive Order 13846 and in furtherance of National Security Presidential Memorandum 2 (NSPM-2, "Restoring Maximum Pressure on the Government of Iran"). The action named four UAE-based sellers and one purchaser of Iranian petrochemicals — including Solvent Organics (over $300 million in exports of Iranian-origin petrochemicals to third countries) and Alseerah Trading (over $150 million) — plus a Turkiye-based petrochemical trader, an Iran-based cargo inspection company, and a marine management company involved in transporting millions of barrels of Iranian crude. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated the goal was to drive Iran's illicit oil and petrochemical exports, including to China, to zero.

The European Commission published Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/261 in the Official Journal on 10 February 2025, imposing definitive anti-dumping duties on imports of biodiesel (fatty-acid mono-alkyl esters / FAME and paraffinic gasoils from synthesis or hydro-treatment of non-fossil origin / HVO) originating in China. Duties range from 10.0% (EcoCeres, an individually-examined producer) to 21.7%–35.6% for other exporters, applied on top of the MFN import duty, covering an estimated €1.4 billion of annual EU-bound Chinese biodiesel flows. The regulation supersedes provisional duties imposed under CR (EU) 2024/2163 and explicitly excludes Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) from the AD scope while introducing mandatory SAF import-registration tracking.