Key insights The massive $1.7 trillion federal spending bill President Biden signed into law at the end of December includes even more significant changes to the U.S. retirement system. Changes include requiring most employers to automatically enroll employees in their retirement plan at a rate of at least 3%. Embrace data-driven management philosophies to help reduce waste and assess program effectiveness. It also increases the age required minimum distributions start from 72 to 73 in 2023 and then to...

On January 3, 2023, USCIS published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to adjust certain benefit request fees that haven’t changed since 2016. Fee changes could dramatically increase both L-1 and H-1B filings, among other categories, with the proposed fees representing a 40% overall weighted average increase with no improvement to overall USCIS processing times. The proposal from the USCIS was published in the federal register on January 4, 2023, and will accept public comments for a 60-day period. ...

Healthcare and Tech Converge Further – We will continue to see the convergence of technology with health care resulting in the proliferation of digital health. Telemedicine, wearables, and remote surgery will continue to attract investment, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies will take advantage of technology to address regulatory hurdles and data privacy issues. Investors Flock to “Wild West” of the Metaverse – Not since the internet’s early days have we seen a frontier mentality in the digital world. The...

In this week’s Roar: setting the supply chain table for 2023, improved schedule reliability, opinions on the West Coast port situation, the state of truck driving jobs in the US, and the effect of climate change on the future of manufacturing. Some are optimistic 2023 will be the year to put the supply chain woes of the last few behind us. We’ll see about that. 2020 to 2022 taught us a few things, one of them being that global trade wasn’t...

The EU continued this week to make progress on its Green Deal ambitions after the Council and European Parliament came to a provisional agreement on the so-called, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Once implemented, the CBAM will introduce a levy on carbon intensive goods entering the EU market. By mirroring the EU’s own internal carbon price under the EU’s emission’s trading system (ETS), European industry will be shielded from cheaper, more polluting products imported from abroad. Under this regulation, companies that import into the...

Thompson Hine is conducting its third Innovation Survey, polling general counsel, Chief Legal Officers, and legal operations professionals to monitor trends and gauge the state of innovation in the legal market. Since 2017, the Thompson Hine Innovation Surveys have served the legal industry by measuring the gap between client feedback and law firms’ appetites to adapt and effect change. EAAC members are being offered an opportunity to help contribute to the Report by sharing thoughts and opinions about innovation.  The...

Regulation On December 6, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU announced that a provisional deal has been reached on a proposal to "minimize the risk of deforestation and forest degradation associated with products that are imported into or exported from the European Union." The agreement sets out mandatory due diligence rules for companies that want to place relevant products on the EU market, and proposes penalties for non-compliance including fines "proportionate to the environmental damage and the...

The Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division recently secured its first criminal conviction for a labor-side violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act after VDA OC LLC (VDA) entered a guilty plea. The conviction follows a pair of highly publicized losses the DOJ suffered earlier this year in its first two criminal trials involving no-poach and wage-fixing accusations. While VDA’s guilty plea shows the DOJ’s commitment to criminally prosecuting labor-side Section 1 claims, questions still remain...