TradeLane

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (“RCEP”) was signed on 15 November 2020 and entered into force on 1 January 2022 for ten countries: Australia, New Zealand, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China*, Japan, Laos, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It was subsequently entered into force for the Republic of Korea on 1 February 2022 and Malaysia on 18 March 2022, and most recently ratified by Indonesia on 30 August 2022. RCEP is one of the largest free trade agreements (“FTA”), covering around one-third of the world’s population and accounting for about one-third of global GDP.

*Note that Hong Kong, China (“Hong Kong”) is a separate customs territory from the People’s Republic of China (“China”).

The U.S. Government released a Federal Register Notice (“Notice”) on August 11^th, 2020 clarifying the changes to origin marking requirements of Hong Kong manufactured goods.

Further to our recent post on the key implications of the U.S. revoking Hong Kong’s ‘special trade status’, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced on June 30, 2020, that it is suspending license exceptions for goods that were previously subject to differential treatment than license exceptions available to Mainland China.