In the future, the authority intends to implement the usage of this system for the payment of fines and pecuniary contributions in administrative proceedings and for settlement agreements (which are currently issued by the General Attorney’s Office at CADE), thus ensuring greater digital integration to its procedures.

O conteúdo CADE launches a new way to pay filing costs aparece primeiro em Grinberg Cordovil Advogados.

The Committee will be an advisory and executive body to implement trade facilitation policies and guidelines established by CAMEX’s Trade Strategy Council and the Executive Management Committee. Its powers include promoting the coordination and harmony iai between Brazilian government agencies, regarding import and export policies, aiming at the implementation of the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement. The Committee will be able to formulate proposals and recommendations to improve and simplify procedures and formalities related to foreign trade, besides monitoring its implementation and carrying out studies and initiatives on the subject.

The Committee may establish temporary technical groups to carry out specific tasks, define guidelines for activities and evaluate performance.  Habitual meetings will be held quarterly, with the possibility of extraordinary ones. The Committee will also have a Cooperation Subcommittee and Local Trade Facilitation Committees.

Trade facilitation is often highlighted as an essential point to reduce bureaucracy and stimulate foreign trade. Furthermore, the creation of the committee is an important step to include Brazil in the best practices, concerning these issues.

O conteúdo Decree Creating the National Trade Facilitation Committee Published aparece primeiro em Grinberg Cordovil Advogados.

Read the full article by Ricardo Casanova Motta and Julia Krein: Facebook/WhatsApp Case: The Fine that was (not) imposed by the European Commission

O conteúdo Facebook/WhatsApp Case: The Fine that was (not) imposed by the European Commission aparece primeiro em Grinberg Cordovil Advogados.

Under multilateral rules, countervailing duties cannot be applied against subsidies deemed “de minimis”, which the U.S. defines as usually constituting up to 1% of the total value of the imported products. For countries considered as “developing”, this minimal threshold doubles to 2%. Multilateral rules also do not allow imposing countervailing duties against imports deemed “negligible”, generally understood in the U.S. as constituting up to 3% of total import value¹ – for developing countries, this negligible volume threshold increases to 4%.

This amendment to the rules therefore reduces the thresholds for imposition of countervailing duties against imports from those countries that were excluded from the list – those changes only affect the list applicable to the countervailing duty law and does not does not affect other preferential programs such as the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).

This change was published less than a week after the U.S. announced it would start, in April, to countervail practices of currency undervaluation by foreign countries, in a series of moves that analysts say target China. ²

The change has become effective immediately.

¹ As long as the aggregated import value of all countries which have “negligible” import volumes do not exceed a total of 7% over total U.S. imports. For undeveloped countries, this total increases to 9%.

² Dias, Marina. “EUA retiram Brasil da lista de nações em desenvolvimento e restringem benefícios comerciais ao país”. Folha de S. Paulo. Feb. 10, 2020. Available at: <https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2020/02/eua-retiram-brasil-da-lista-de-nacoes-em-desenvolvimento-e-restringe-beneficios-comerciais-ao-pais.shtml>.

O conteúdo U.S. reviews list of developing countries entitles to special treatment under subsidy and countervailing measures rules aparece primeiro em Grinberg Cordovil Advogados.

In order to meet the requirements for characterization of a subsidy, Commerce will change its specificity rules to allow the understanding that exporting and importing companies can be considered as a “group” of companies. For the difficult task of measuring the benefits conferred to exporting companies by such practices, USDOC should calculate it as “equal to the extra amount of domestic currency received by a firm because of the undervaluation”[2].

Since it is an amendment to the current subsidy regulations, investigations must follow the rules for the imposition of countervailing duties – especially regarding the need of a positive finding of injury and causal link to the domestic industry for the application of trade remedies. Therefore, the measure should not, in principle, affect all exports of a country, but rather only of the investigated products.

The changes become effective on April 6, 2020.

O conteúdo U.S. changes rules on subsidies to address undervalued currencies aparece primeiro em Grinberg Cordovil Advogados.

The Reporting Commissioner Paula Azevedo had initially voted in favor of applying the resolution to a case in a previous trial session, in which a TCC had been signed prior to the resolution coming into force. However, following a subsequent vote by Commissioner Luiz Hoffmann, Commissioner Azevedo rectified her decision with CADE’s Tribunal, unanimously voting for the non-retroactive application of Resolution 21 to agreements signed prior to its publication. The Commissioner based his decision on two main points: (i) the need to ensure legal certainty for agreements concluded before a new regulation entered into force and (ii) the existence of confidentiality clauses in the TCC, which would prevent CADE from disclosing the documents. Accordingly, the new resolution (and its obligation to disclose documents contained there in) will only apply to agreements signed after its publication, under this new judgement.

O conteúdo CADE decides not to apply retroactively its resolution regarding disclosure of evidence from agreements aparece primeiro em Grinberg Cordovil Advogados.

The new regulation follows the general system provided by the prior normative, but innovates through more detailed procedural rules, including a deadline for members of the group to deliberate on the claims received. A simplification was also promoted over the hypotheses that constitute a “supply shortage”, reducing them to three situations.

The scope of the instrument has also been updated so that there is greater standardization of the benefits granted to each member. This means that Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay will be able to reduce the rates to 2% or 0%, and Paraguay’s benefit of a 0% reduction will be maintained. In addition, each member-country will have a list of 100 NCM codes for the application of tariff reductions, without any limitation related to the different hypotheses of shortage.

O conteúdo Mercosur changes rules for tariff reductions due to shortage reasons aparece primeiro em Grinberg Cordovil Advogados.

 The nominations of the other three Commissioners and the General Superintendent published last week were not changed. These names must now be approved by the Senate.

O conteúdo Bolsonaro Finishes Appointments for Cade aparece primeiro em Grinberg Cordovil Advogados.

These tariffs were applied based on an investigation carried out in early 2018 under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974, which allows the U.S. government to take actions to eliminate unfair trade practices, understood as any “act, policy, or practice of a foreign government that is unreasonable or discriminatory and burdens or restricts the commerce of the United States.”

Under this investigation, the U.S. government concluded that China’s innovation policy and intellectual property rights aim at developing Chinese technology by means of the acquisition and transfer of foreign technology, which the USTR believes is harmful to American companies, as they may see their innovation being transferred to Chinese companies or otherwise face an unleveled playing field against Chinese companies. Based on these findings, certain imports from China had been subject to additional tariffs since mid-2018; recently, the US government announced it wound increase the list of products subject to this additional duty, reaching a total of 300 billion dollars in imports, a measure which escalated the already strong commercial tensions between the two countries.

The USTR is now accepting requests from US companies for the exclusion of certain products from this additional tariff, as well as comments and responses on other parties’ requests for exclusion. The USTR estimates that it will receive 60,000 requests to exclude products, 7,000 responses to a product exclusion request, and 3,000 reproductions to these responses. The deadline for submitting an exclusion request is September 30, and the deadline for submitting comments is October 22, 2019.

O conteúdo USTR Seeks Comments on Requests of Exclusion from Tariffs Applied to China aparece primeiro em Grinberg Cordovil Advogados.

The elaboration of a trade agreement between the countries, according to Guedes and Marcos Troyjo, Special Secretary of Foreign Trade and International Affairs, is an orientation from the Presidents of both countries, who would like Brazil and the United States to have a closer relationship and to integrate their economies.

The Special Secretary of Foreign Trade and International Affairs also stated that since Brazil is part of a customs union, an agreement involving tariffs must include the presence of the other members of Mercosur. If the agreement focuses on other commercial aspects, it may be bilateral between Brazil and the United States. Both scenarios would be the subject of the negotiation process.

O conteúdo Brazil and the United States initiate negotiations for trade agreement aparece primeiro em Grinberg Cordovil Advogados.