International Trade & Export Controls
Recognizing the cost and difficulty encountered when entering new markets, our international trade practice guides clients through resolving trade disputes, market access, customs and export controls issues. Our team operates primarily out of Washington DC and Brussels, close to the world’s centers of trade regulation; our experience provides our clients with the access necessary to avoid international trade issues.
Global Import & Export Compliance
International trade compliance and technology transfer are governed by laws and regulations of multiple jurisdictions forming a highly complicated and ever-evolving global compliance regime. A single import or export transaction can implicate the rules of multiple jurisdictions, rules that are frequently inconsistent or even conflicting. Yet, understanding the various regulatory pieces affecting cross-border business and assembling those pieces into clear and efficient compliance strategies have never been more important. Assembling the puzzle requires sophisticated, coordinated legal counsel worldwide with an understanding of your business and your industry.
How do we do it?
Geography: 37 offices in 18 countries
Experience: Lawyers who have handled every form of international trade compliance matter
Integration: Global team collaboration to solve your problem
Compliance practices:
- Export controls
- Economic sanctions
- Customs
- Anticorruption
- Anti-boycott
- Anti-money laundering
- Foreign investment
Services:
- Structuring and advising on cross-border activities
- Obtaining licenses, consents and other authorizations
- Obtaining government advisory opinions, determinations and rulings
- Conducting internal investigations
- Submitting voluntary self-disclosures of violations to the government
- Implementing compliance programs
- Providing awareness and compliance official training
Global trade compliance is not a practice that your legal counsel can learn about as events unfold. Hiring the wrong legal team may lead to lost opportunities and even regulatory violations. Squire Sanders offers proven experience, solutions, compliance tools and resources ready to be deployed and the experience to understand the solution from the outset.
Market Access
Companies operating around the world face barriers to doing business in many markets. Unfair trading practices, government-created obstacles that favor domestic companies and other methods of state control, including subsidies, are not uncommon in many countries. Businesses that can change the regulatory environment to reduce or eliminate these barriers in support of their business interests will have a real competitive edge in today’s economy.
Our trade team advises on how trade and other regulatory barriers may be overcome (or used as a tool) so that your company may enjoy unhindered market access and increased market share. We employ a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving, recognizing that many sector-specific issues require cross-cutting horizontal approaches and that many country-specific problems benefit from an understanding of solutions in other markets. We draw on legal, economic and government relations knowledge to provide solutions for our clients. Working with your managers, general counsel and government affairs personnel, we provide the following services:
- Representing parties in trade remedy investigations and implementing proactive trade remedy strategies to ensure a strong market presence for our clients;
- Evaluating the overall scope of market access problems and finding ways to improve your business environment; and
- Identifying the regulatory changes occurring in specific markets that could be of interest to you, and taking action to bring about regulatory change in a favorable way.
Trade Remedies
Our worldwide trade remedy practice is designed to conduct trade investigations and resolve trade disputes in a seamless, cost-effective manner. Our team of well-known and experienced trade remedy lawyers handles proceedings including antidumping, countervailing duty and safeguard investigations and reviews. Our experience includes prosecuting and defending cases involving allegedly injurious and unfairly low-priced or subsidized imports in a wide variety of industries and, most importantly, a demonstrated record of success. We also conduct and manage negotiations, pre-trial settlements, ad hoc arbitration, mediation, early neutral evaluation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Our services include:
- Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings – Defense and prosecution of actions anywhere in the world intended to remedy injury to domestic industries from imports sold below “fair” value (below cost, home or third-country prices, also known as dumping) or subsidized by national, regional or local governments (countervailing duty proceedings). Our trade team also performs proactive dumping and subsidy audits to limit or eliminate future antidumping/countervailing duty exposure.
- Safeguards – Defense and prosecution of actions brought anywhere in the world to impose tariffs or quotas on imports deemed particularly injurious to domestic production, including special China safeguard actions.
- WTO Dispute Settlement – Representation of governments and other affected parties in World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement proceedings, extending from advocacy before executive branch agencies to WTO Dispute Settlement Body proceedings in Geneva.
- Intellectual Property Border Enforcement Proceedings – Defense and prosecution of border actions to protect and enforce intellectual property rights, including proceedings before the US International Trade Commission under Section 337 and customs procedures to protect copyrights and trademarks in the United States, the European Union and elsewhere.
- Customs Litigation and Other Trade Proceedings – Review of benefits under the US and EU Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) programs for duty-free entry tariff and related customs litigation.
- Market Access and Trade Policy – Advocacy before the legislative and executive branches of the US government, the EU institutions and governments of other countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East to resolve trade issues.
Áreas de atuação
Representative Experience
- Representing the publicly traded owner-operator of a nationally prominent group of seasonal amusement parks in its US$1.24 billion acquisition of a group of five large amusement parks. The purchase agreement was reached through intensive negotiations and an auction process that included more than 40 bidders. We also represented the client in a US$2 billion bridge financing for the cash transaction that closed simultaneously with the acquisition and in the subsequent US$2 billion permanent financing.
- Representing a major insurance provider in Japan’s postal privatization. We worked to ensure that postal regulations were pro-competitive and enabled foreign investors to compete against the newly formed Japan Postal companies.
- Advised major US-based power company on trade barriers and regulatory issues in Kazakhstan. We developed a case before US agencies, and advised our client on a strategy to solve their problems.
- Serving as export controls ombudsman for a large multinational company including resolving day-to-day licensing and compliance matters, drafting compliance procedures, and drafting and presenting training materials.
- Advising a large Germany-based defense contractor on CFIUS and defense security service approvals for acquisition of a cleared US contractor and participation in other government programs.
- Obtaining a commodity jurisdiction determination that a component used in spacecraft applications is under Commerce Department dual-use export licensing jurisdiction.