Steptoe’s International Trade group has put together a helpful guide to the new NAFTA (the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)).

The Agreement must still go through ratification and implementation processes in all three countries before it can enter into force. In the coming weeks, the Trump Administration will submit legislation to Congress to implement the USMCA. Before a vote can be taken in the United States, however, the Administration will first need to resolve concerns and objections raised by members of Congress from both parties, making any vote on the USMCA challenging before the congressional summer recess.

Although the USMCA carries over a number of NAFTA’s important market-opening elements, it also introduces a number of changes that carry potentially significant implications for business planning across many sectors.
Continue Reading USMCA Unlocked: Working Under the New NAFTA

US government enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) remained robust in 2018, and the trend of increasing multi-jurisdictional cooperation and enforcement continued throughout the year. In the United States, the 33 combined individual and corporate FCPA enforcement actions concluded by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in

On February 26, 2019, Steptoe, Greenlane, and the UK Trade Forum are hosting an interactive discussion on how customs authorities and companies around Europe are preparing for Brexit. The event will take place in London.

For more information and to register for the event, please click here.

As we have previously written, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Venezuelan state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA) as a Specially Designated National (SDN) on January 28, 2019. This action will have a significant impact on US persons and businesses involved in any dealings

On August 3, 2018, twelve years after its last major update, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) proposed extensive revisions to its rules. The “comprehensive set of proposed changes to modernize its rules for resolving disputes between foreign investors and states” includes new provisions on transparency, arbitrator disclosure, security for costs,

On August 24, 2018, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected an attempt by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to expand the jurisdictional reach of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) over foreign nationals. The three-judge panel affirmed the lower court’s ruling in United States v. Hoskins that a non-resident foreign national

Following months of hearings and other deliberations, Congress passed, and President Trump signed into law on August 13, 2018, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 (FIRRMA). FIRRMA is the first update to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in over a decade and will significantly expand the jurisdiction

The ambitious CFIUS reform bill introduced in November 2017, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA), has recently received significant congressional attention and appears likely to become law this year, with some revisions from the version introduced last year. On June 18, 2018, the Senate passed its version of FIRRMA as Title XVII of