The State Department is removing certain “lower performing radars” from the U.S. Munitions List and is extending for two years a temporary modification to Category XI, the State Department said in a notice in the Federal Register.

China is not looking to escalate its trade war with the U.S. and wants to focus on removing tariffs, not adding them, a Chinese government spokesman said Aug. 28. “We are resolutely opposed to the escalation of the trade war and are willing to resolve the issue through consultation and cooperation in a calm attitude,” said Gao Feng, a commerce ministry spokesman, according to an unofficial translation of a press conference transcript. “The escalation of the trade war is not conducive to China, not to the United States, and is not conducive to the interests of the people of the world.”

Nazak Nikakhtar is no longer the acting Commerce Department undersecretary for industry and security, a position she held as she awaited confirmation from the Senate, a Commerce spokesperson said. Nikakhtar is no longer performing that duty and is now focused solely on her role as assistant secretary for industry and analysis. Her nomination has not yet been officially withdrawn.

The United Kingdom’s post-Brexit tariff plan may not be a viable long term option and may significantly damage certain U.K. farmers, companies and exporters, said Robert Chapman, a London-based trade lawyer with Mayer Brown.

ExxonMobil is requesting that a court vacate a $2 million penalty imposed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control for doing business with Rosneft, a Russian oil company, according to a brief filed Aug. 26 with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Violations of the Arms Export Control Act require knowledge that the unlicensed exports were unlawful, and not just that the exporter knew their general conduct was illegal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in an Aug. 20 decision. Vacating the conviction of a forwarder for Arms Export Control Act violations, the appeals court held that the lower court’s jury instructions were not specific enough and could have been misinterpreted to include knowledge of import violations in another country.

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Aug. 19-23 in case they were missed.

Japan said it will allow “legitimate” exports to South Korea as it prepares today to remove the country from its list of trusted trading partners. During an Aug. 27 press conference, Hiroshige Seko, Japan’s minister of trade, economy and industry, repeated assertions that the move is not a “countermeasure” to any South Korean actions and is not an export embargo.

The U.S. and Japan agreed to a trade deal that will see Japan buy more U.S. agricultural goods, including beef, pork, dairy and corn, the countries announced during the G-7 summit in France.

The Department of Finance Canada is deploying changes to antidumping regulations “to ensure that an appropriate level of anti-dumping duties can be applied to goods that are dumped into Canada,” it said in an Aug. 23 news release. “This will provide greater flexibility to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to address situations where there may be distortions in the price of the goods in the country of export. It clarifies alternative methods to calculate the costs of production of the imported goods, in cases where the price of inputs is distorted because of purchases made between affiliated companies or because of a particular market situation.”