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The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) recently published its 2024 Annual Report. Filing volume for both declarations and notices remains lower compared to their peaks in 2021 and 2022, respectively. While CFIUS continues to clear the vast majority of transactions it reviews without mitigation, compliance site visits and civil penalties increased, highlighting CFIUS’s more assertive enforcement posture.

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In the past several weeks the Trump administration has taken multiple actions on tariffs, based on several different legal authorities. The landscape is shifting almost continuously, and more changes are likely coming.

A number of the tariff actions are linked to the results of bilateral negotiations that involve commitments to investment and other actions, although in some cases the details of those agreements and commitments do not appear to be settled.

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Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has adopted sweeping tariffs on nearly every trading partner, with a promise of more on a range of strategic sectors including industrial metals and critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and automobiles. These actions have provoked countermeasures from China and others. While these developments are rightly seen as geopolitical, trade actions—and the uncertainty they create for market access and supply chains—have direct and increasingly material implications for companies in financial distress, and for their advisers.

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On August 6, 2025, President Trump published a new Executive Order imposing secondary tariffs on India in response to its continued importation of Russian-origin crude oil. This marks both an escalation in U.S. trade negotiations with India and the first major Russia-related enforcement action of his second term. It also reflects the Trump Administration’s novel use of trade measures to enforce U.S. sanctions policy.

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On June 26, 2025, the UK government brought into force the Public Interest Disclosure (Prescribed Persons) (Amendment) Order 2025 (“2025 Amendment”), marking a notable development in the UK government’s sanctions enforcement strategy.

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On 23 June 2025, the UK government published its new Modern Industrial Strategy document (the “IS Document”), outlining the government’s current strategies for UK economic growth. The policy paper focuses on eight priority sectors: professional and business services; advanced manufacturing; clean energy; creative industries; defence; digital technologies; financial services; and life sciences (the “IS Priority Sectors”), which together represent 32% of the UK’s economy. The IS Document makes specific (albeit brief) reference to the UK government’s plans in relation to the UK’s investment screening regime, which is governed by the UK National Security and Investment Act 2021 (NSIA), and confirms that long-awaited updates to the NSIA are still on the government’s to-do list.

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In a landmark decision, the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) has ruled against President Trump’s imposition of tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). In its decision (involving two consolidated cases, V.O.S. Selections, Inc. et al. v. United States of America et al. and The State of Oregon et al. v. United States Department of Homeland Security et al.), the court emphasized that the Constitution assigns the authority to set import duties to Congress, and therefore the President’s power to impose tariffs must be located in specific statutes delegating that authority to the Executive. The CIT held that IEEPA cannot be read to grant the President such power.

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Two days before its scheduled effective date, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced the rescission of the Biden administration’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Diffusion Rule on May 13. The Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion, issued as an interim final rule on January 15, 2025, established new requirements under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) for the export, reexport and in-country transfer of advanced computing integrated circuits (ICs). These requirements created new licensing and quota regimes for advanced AI chips, as well as a tiered framework for assessing export restrictions to diverse jurisdictions (discussed in our previous post here).

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The Trump administration has intensified its America First Trade Policy initiatives by announcing three new investigations under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 by the Department of Commerce. As foreshadowed in the administration’s Day 1 Executive Order, last week Commerce announced the initiation of investigations into whether imports of pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and critical minerals threatened to impair national security. And on April 23, 2025, Commerce announced the initiation of a fourth Section 232 investigation into imports of trucks. These follow previously announced and ongoing investigations into copper and lumber, as well as existing section 232 duties on steel, aluminum and light passenger vehicles.

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On April 2, 2025, President Trump signed a sweeping Executive Order (EO) imposing tariffs designed to address what the Trump administration has characterized as persistent trade imbalances allegedly caused by unfair trade practices. Invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the Administration declared trade deficits a national emergency and is adopting tariffs based on its view of what would be required to drive the U.S. trade deficit in goods with each country to zero.

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