Client Alerts

On October 4, 2018, the U.S. Department of Transportation released the long-awaited Autonomous Vehicles 3.0 Preparing for the Future of Transportation guidelines (“AV 3.0”). These guidelines build upon the voluntary guidance issued in Automated Driving Systems 2.0: A Vision for Safety and incorporate comments from many stakeholders including manufacturers, suppliers, state and local governments, and infrastructure owners and operators.

On October 1^st the United States reached a deal with Canada and announced the newly minted United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement or “USMCA”. The U.S auto industry, including the UAW and analysts had a mixed initial reaction to the White House announcement of the deal, which it says will make it easier for automakers and suppliers to expand domestic plants by making it more expensive to produce outside the U.S. The newly announced pact is over 100 pages long, and all parties agree needs significant further review to understand how all the details will impact the various sectors.  

This Client alert is to inform of changes in the processing of the “Premium Processing” option for Petitions for Employment Based immigration cases. Where appropriate, employers have sought to sponsor or petition future or existing foreign national employees to meet the demands of their business. These Employment Based Petitions are filed and adjudicated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (“USCIS”). Employers may seek to have their Petitions handled as a “Premium Processing” matter when timing is a concern for an employer’s sponsorship of a foreign national employee by completing Form I-907 and paying the appropriate “Premium Processing fee.

The Trump Administration announced Monday evening that it will impose 10% Section 301 tariffs on $200 billion of goods imported from China beginning next week.  The tariffs, which go into effect September 24, will rise to 25% on January 1, 2019.  In his statement at the White House, President Trump added that “if China takes retaliatory action against our farmers or other industries, we will immediately pursue phase three, which is tariffs on approximately $267 billion of additional imports.” 

Soon, avid readers of the Federal Register will see “updates” to the 232 Steel and Aluminum tariff exclusion process that the Department of Commerce says is based on feedback from public comment. There are changes in the proposed final rule, dubbed the “second interim final rule", and the changes will clearly help future filers. But, for those 38,000 filed comments, the next question is, how are already-filed applications going to be treated under the new rules?

On Wednesday, August 29, President Trump issued additional Section 232 steel and aluminum proclamations to update and modify earlier proclamations. President Trump had earlier exempted certain countries, namely, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Korea from the 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum and in most cases (except Australia) quotas were imposed rather than tariffs.  This new action is apparently in response to the realization that these quotas have adversely affected some U.S companies that couldn’t source sufficient quantities of steel and aluminum domestically and the quotas were filled from these previously exempted countries. It simply supplements an existing exclusion process and extends it to the case of exempted countries which had quotas which are now filled or close to filled.

On August 27, 2018, President Trump’s and Mexico’s Enrique Peña Nieto congratulated each other in a conference call for reaching “preliminary agreement in principle” in regards to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

This new agreement is intended to replace the 24-year-old NAFTA agreement with modern provisions addressing the new technological realities of doing business. It also intends to give a solution to the Administration’s priority to re-shore manufacturing to the United States. 

As a follow up to the prior alert on the 2019 proposed Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program from CMS, attention should be given to the significant changes in reimbursement for remote patient management and store and forward telehealth.  Comments to the proposed rules as noted in the prior Health Alert are due by September 10, 2018 with a final ruling expected in November. 

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced on August 8th that the U.S. would begin imposing 25% tariffs on a second tranche of Chinese products valued at approximately $16B on August 23rd.   Tariffs on a first list of products valued at approximately $34B as a result of the USTR’s Section 301 investigation took effect July 6th.

In a surprising and possibly unprecedented action, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer announced late Wednesday, August 1^st that the President directed him to consider an increase in the proposed Section 301 tariff originally announced on July 10^th from 10% to 25%. 

On July 27, 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), published a Proposed Rule regarding significant modifications to Medicare payment policies under the Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) for Part B services rendered in CY 2019.

Over the past year, there has been a major increase in the number of businesses seeking insurance coverage for losses they incurred as a result of “fraudulent instruction” scams.  A fraudulent instruction scam is where a criminal hacker collects data from the victim’s computer that allows the hacker to send plausible-looking requests to transfer funds to bogus accounts.  

Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative, yesterday announced a new list of Chinese products, worth approximately $200 billion, that will be reviewed for an additional 10% tariff under the USTR’s ongoing Section 301 investigation.  

In prior client alerts, we discussed the imposition of tariffs on various products from China of 25%, based on a finding by the President of violations of section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 by China related to U.S. intellectual property rights.

The final list of 818 tariff items subject to the 25% tariffs recently imposed by President Trump on products imported from China was released on June 15, 2018, covering some $34 billion in products.  The President imposed the tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 that took effect July 6, 2018.  The administration previously indicated that a product exclusion process would be announced, presumably similar to the one the Department of Commerce has put in place or the steel and aluminum tariffs issued under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 earlier this year.  The section 232 process which was administered by the Commerce Department has been roundly criticized for being burdensome and complex – after 3 months, only 100 or so of the over 20,000 applications have been fully processed, and almost half of that number were denied.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) has issued a request for information seeking input from the public on how to address any undue regulatory impact and burden of the physician self-referral law (the “Stark Law”).

Exasperation with the technical and practical restrictions of the complex and intricate Stark Law has been apparent since 1988 when Congressman Pete Stark introduced the "Ethics in Patient Referrals Act, " the first of the so-called Stark Law. Now, CMS has issued an invitation to interested parties to comment on them.  

In a 5-4 decision, issued on June 26, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s latest Travel Ban of September 2017. The Court found that the Travel Ban was within the President’s broad statutory authority to limit the entry of nationals of certain countries in the interest of national security. 

The Department of Labor (“DOL”) recently finalized new regulations providing that a “bona fide group or association of employers” that sponsor or maintain an employee welfare benefit plan may be an “employer” under Section 3(5) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”). The upshot of the new regulations is that small employers or sole proprietors which previously had difficulty affording health insurance can now band together and purchase large group market insurance plans (which might result in potential premium cost-savings and reduction of administrative costs).

In earlier client alerts (June 15, 2018 and April 4, 2018), we have discussed the proposed tariffs under section 301 against China that arose as a result of allegedly unfair Chinese intellectual property practices. The administration, in its openly declared trade war with China, has been expanding on the implementation of these duties and issued a new Federal Register Notice dated June 20, 2018. This notice sets out procedures for entry of products already determined to be subject to tariffs and assigns a special tariff number to be used to identify them in addition to the regular HTS number.  Products of China that are provided for in new HTSUS heading 9903.88.01, as established by Annex A of this notice that are entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on July 6, 2018, shall be subject to an additional duty of 25 percent ad valorem.

As a result of pressure from many sources including foreign embassies, the U.S Department of Commerce has announced an extension of the deadlines in its recently announced investigation under Section 232 of U.S automobiles (including SUV’s and light trucks) and auto parts imports and their potential impact on the national security.  

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) today released a list of products imported from China that will be subject to additional tariffs as part of the U.S. response to alleged unfair trade practices by China related to the alleged forced transfer of American technology and intellectual property.