Posts Tagged trade

Commerce Dept Questioned About Gun Export Pause

From Bearing Arms:

The agency hasn’t said if there were any specific concerns that led to the highly unusual move, which is ostensibly meant to “further assess current firearm export control review policies to determine whether any changes are warranted to advance U.S. national security and foreign policy interests” and “enable the Department to more effectively assess and mitigate risk of firearms being diverted to entities or activities that promote regional instability, violate human rights, or fuel criminal activities.”

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Democrats’ Backdoor Gun Control

From The Federalist:

President Biden and his elitist allies in woke banks and investment firms know that severe restrictions on Second Amendment rights aren’t possible given the current composition of the Supreme Court, thanks in large part to President Trump. So they are turning to other tactics instead, most of which aren’t being covered by the press, to get the job done. It’s working.

For more than a decade, investors, banks, and other financial institutions have been dragging U.S. corporations toward the full adoption of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards, posing a significant threat to the long-term survival of the firearms industry.

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NSSF President Responds To Biden Ammo Ban

From Cam and Company:

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Biden Cracks Down On Ammo Imports During A Shortage

From The Truth About Guns:

On Friday, August 20th, Joe Biden signed an executive order blocking the importation of all Russian-made firearms and ammo. The move was ostensibly made to punish the Russians for the imprisonment and attempted murder of dissident Alexey Navalny.

So in the middle of a foreign policy debacle in Afghanistan, Biden has decided to sanction Russia America’s gun owners in response to a Russian opposition party figure coming down with an acute case of nerve agent poisoning. This violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention — which occurred a year ago — apparently wasn’t serious enough, though, for the Biden administration to want to stand in the way of Russian gas exports by a Putin friend and former Stasi agent.

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Silicon Valley and China

From Foreign Policy:

In the U.S. system, laws are legitimate insofar as they are conceived by what Jean-Jacques Rousseau called “the general will” of the people, expressed through the workings of a democratic political system. Laws that are arbitrary or imposed by the will of a single person of authority are illegitimate. Yet the Chinese system rests on the idea that the sole source of legitimacy is the CCP, which represents—it claims—the will of the Chinese nation in its entirety and violently suppresses challenges to its authority. This sharp tension between the political value systems that prevail in the two countries is a primary cause of the spiraling bilateral competition. Tech companies confront this tension when they are tasked to comply with Chinese laws, by enabling the arrest of dissidents for “subversion of state power” or the mass surveillance of Uighurs, which are rightly viewed by most Americans as immoral and illegitimate.

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Arms Export Reforms Upheld

From The Truth About Guns:

When the state attorneys general sued to stop the rules from taking effect over unfounded concerns with 3D printing and a conflation of export controls and domestic gun control laws, NSSF led the fight to allow the final rules to take effect by moving to intervene in the case. Our brief focused on the scope of the remedy (injunction) the court might enter, should the court determine that one was warranted on the merits.

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Saudi Arabia Faces Challenges in the New Year

Saudi Arabia Faces Challenges in the New Year is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

By Michael Nayebi-Oskoui

The Middle East is one of the most volatile regions in the world — it is no stranger to upheaval. The 2009 uprisings in Iran and the brinksmanship of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government were followed by the chaos of the Arab Spring, the spillover of the Syrian conflict into Iraq and a potential realignment of the U.S.-Iranian relationship. Unlike recent years, however, 2015 is likely to see regional Sunni Arab interests realign toward a broader acceptance of moderate political Islam. The region is emerging from the uncertainty of the past half-decade, and the foundations of its future are taking shape. This process will not be neat or orderly, but changes are clearly taking place surrounding the Syrian and Libyan conflicts, as well as the region’s anticipation of a strengthened Iran.

The Middle East enters 2015 facing several crises. Libyan instability remains a threat to North African security, and the Levant and Persian Gulf must figure out how to adjust course in the wake of the U.S.-Iranian negotiations, the Sunni-Shiite proxy war in Syria and Iraq, and the power vacuum created by a Turkish state bogged down by internal concerns that prevent it from assuming a larger role throughout the region. Further undermining the region is the sharp decline in global oil prices. While Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates will be able to use considerable cash reserves to ride out the slump, the rest of the Middle East’s oil-exporting economies face dire consequences. Read the rest of this entry »

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Iranian and US Citizens Plead Guilty to Export Violations

From FBI:

Two men pleaded guilty today to charges related to the unlawful export of aircraft and aircraft parts from the United States to Iran, announced David J. Hale, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky; Lisa Monaco, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; and Perrye Turner, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Louisville Division.

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A Change of Course in Cuba and Venezuela?

A Change of Course in Cuba and Venezuela? is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

By George Friedman and Reva Bhalla

Strange statements are coming out of Cuba these days. Fidel Castro, in the course of a five-hour interview in late August, reportedly told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”

Once that statement hit the headlines, Castro backtracked. Dressed in military uniform for the first time in four years (which we suspect was his way of signaling that he was not abandoning the revolution), he delivered a rare, 35-minute speech Sept. 3 to students at the University of Havana. In addition to spending several minutes on STRATFOR’s Iran analysis, Castro addressed his earlier statement on the Cuban model, saying he was “accurately quoted but misinterpreted” and suggesting that the economic model doesn’t work anymore but that the revolution lives on.

Castro, now 84, may be old, but he still seems to have his wits about him. We don’t know whether he was grossly misinterpreted by the reporter during the earlier interview, was acknowledging the futility of the Cuban model and/or was dropping hints of a policy shift. Regardless of what he did or did not say, Castro’s reported statement on the weakness of the revolution was by no means revolutionary. Read the rest of this entry »

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