Global Trade & Economy

A Taiwanese company and its chief executive are being sanctioned for helping to support North Korea's weapons regime.

According to the Treasury Department, Trans Multi Mechanics has been used to negotiate contracts for the regime and ship equipment worth thousands of dollars to North Korea.

The department claims that the company was used by a Taiwanese man and his son who were arrested in Estonia and Illinois in recent weeks for attempting to export American machinery that could be used for producing weapons of mass destruction. Since the late 1990s, that man, known as Alex Tsai, had been allegedly providing or attempting to provide North Korea with items that could be used to advance the country's weapons program.

European Union officials said a trade agreement must be comprehensive and ambitious to secure support on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Pentagon's claims mark the strongest to date about the Chinese government launching cyberattacks against U.S. government. 

Lawmakers who back natural-gas exports are trying to woo skeptical Democrats.

Business groups and lawmakers expressed support for President Obama's choices to complete his second-term economic team that is focusing heavily on expanding U.S. trade opportunities. 

Obama announced on Thursday that he wants Chicago businesswoman Penny Pritzker to head up the Commerce Department and Mike Froman to take the helm as the next U.S. Trade Representative before heading out of town for a three-day trip to Mexico and Costa Rica that will include talks about trade with the nation's third-largest trading partner. 

"In both instances, I'm going to be working to deepen our economic and trade relationships across Latin America — relationships that create jobs and growth here at home and offer our businesses growing markets where they can sell more American-made goods and services abroad," the president said. 

President Obama on Thursday rounded out his second-term economic team.

The Obama administration will likely approve a limited number of politically controversial natural gas export projects despite some fears on Capitol Hill about a massive expansion, according to a Moody's report released Wednesday.

It said the Energy Department (DOE) would likely approve three out of the 20 applications under review for exporting natural gas to nations that lack a free-trade agreement with the United States. One such application already has received the go-ahead from the DOE.

Those projects have alarmed some lawmakers, who are tussling over whether to allow a major expansion of natural gas exports.

The United States Trade Representative's office said on Wednesday that it has "grave concerns" about Chinese theft of U.S. business secrets.

The office made the statement as part of the release of an annual report grading other countries on their efforts to protect intellectual property.

In the report, the agency noted that trade secret theft can involve "departing employees, failed joint ventures, cyber intrusion and hacking, and misuse of information submitted to government entities for purposes of complying with regulatory obligations."

Two senior House Democrats are pressing President Obama to work with European partners to increase worker safety in Bangladesh, following last week’s collapse of a factory building in that country.

Reps. Sandy Levin (Mich.) and George Miller (Calif.) noted, in a letter to Obama, that European and U.S. retailers buy around two-thirds of the garments produced in Bangladesh.

Because of that, Levin and Miller say, the administration should take the lead in an effort to “adopt a common response leading to a universal standard guaranteeing basic workplace safety and fundamental worker rights” in Bangladesh. That effort should also include the Bangladeshi garment industry, its workers and both local and international labor groups, the lawmakers say.

“This most recent tragedy repeats what has become a serious and disturbing pattern in Bangladesh – labor and workplace laws are flouted and workers’ safety and rights denied in the pursuit of lucrative export opportunities, primarily to Europe and the United States,” wrote Levin and Miller, the top Democrats at the Ways and Means and Education and the Workforce panels, respectively.

“And workers – most of them young women and mothers – are left to pay the terrible consequences with their lives.”

The impact of natural gas exports on everything from foreign relations to jobs will get a look in the House during a May 7 hearing, The Hill has learned.

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power will hold the 10 a.m. hearing, committee spokeswoman Charlotte Baker told The Hill. Witnesses for the hearing have not yet been finalized, she said.

The hearing will sharpen the focus on the geopolitical effects of expanding natural gas exports.