Good morning. Export control and sanctions experts met this week at the WorldECR Forum in Washington. Hot conversation topics included the increasing use by the White House of export controls as leverage for trade negotiations and a recent agreement between the U.S. and China to at least call a temporary truce to the trade war.

Some other highlights:

U.S.-China Trade Tension: With U.S. tariffs and trade controls and efforts by China to retaliate expected to continue, the trading environment will likely remain “very complicated and dynamic,” said Ajay Kuntamukkala, managing partner at law firm Hogan Lovells.

For trade compliance professionals, new and expanded regulations—combined with an uncertain trade environment—means more attention from the C-suite.

“Before, trade compliance might have advised just the general counsel, but now they can find themselves in a meeting with the CEO or audit committee. That pressure is relatively new,” Kuntamukkala said.

Risks from Mexican cartels: The Trump Justice Department has made cartel prosecutions a top enforcement priority. Companies with footprints in Mexico could face government scrutiny and enforcement actions if their operations there are linked to inadvertently supporting cartels.

Dawson Law, the founder of risk advisory firm Conseil Global Advisors, said companies need to look at any internal department or third-party supplier touching Mexico.

“The criticality of Mexico in a company’s supply chains is a lot bigger than people may realize. It is also a ripe area for criminal and civil cases,” said Law.

JPMorgan discloses debanking probe.

JPMorgan Chase faces a U.S. probe into its policies around debanking customers following President Trump’s August executive order targeting the practice, the bank disclosed Wednesday, Risk Journal’s Richard Vanderford reports. 

JPMorgan is responding to requests from government authorities regarding the “provision of services to customers and potential customers,” the bank said in a quarterly securities filing Wednesday.

Mamdani taps antitrust crusader Lina Khan to help lead transition.

Lina Khan’s trustbusting crusade ended when President Trump took office. But New York is giving her a new stage to spread her progressive zeal about competition and standing up for underdog businesses. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission chair during the Biden administration, would serve as a co-chair of his transition team. 

• Wall Street Couldn’t Stop Mayor Mamdani. Now It Has to Work With Him.

• President Trump’s global tariffs appeared to be on shaky ground after Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism during a hearing on Wednesday about his authority to impose sweeping measures on countries around the world.
   
• The French government moved to temporarily suspend Shein’s website after authorities discovered sex dolls resembling children and weapons were being sold on the e-commerce giant’s platform.
   
• Telecommunications companies, battered by nation-state attacks and relentless hacking attempts in recent years, are making concerted efforts to strengthen their collective cybersecurity.
   
• The European Union’s antitrust regulator opened an investigation into exchanges Deutsche Boerse and Nasdaq over how they handle financial derivatives in the region.

Putin paves way to resume nuclear testing as tensions flare with Trump. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his top security officials to draw up plans for potential nuclear weapons testing should President Trump follow through on his suggestions that the U.S. resume testing its nuclear arsenal, in a fresh sign of the faltering relationship between the two leaders.

While the threats from each side are likely still tools for political signaling at this stage, if either Washington or Moscow pushes ahead with testing it would raise nuclear tensions to levels unseen since the peak of the Cold War.

• The body of the last dead American hostage in Gaza was returned by Hamas after more than two years, marking the close of a painful chapter for U.S. families whose relatives were taken by the militant group.
   
• Hundreds of armed Hamas fighters are trapped in tunnels under the Israeli-controlled side of Gaza, and willing to take shots at Israel.
   
• Telecommunications companies, battered by nation-state attacks and relentless hacking attempts in recent years, are making concerted efforts to strengthen their collective cybersecurity.
   
• The Federal Aviation Administration said it was ordering airline traffic to be reduced by 10% at 40 airports while air-traffic controllers work without pay during the government shutdown.

• Starbucks baristas on Wednesday authorized a strike after their union and the company failed to agree on a new contract.
   
• Tesla shareholders will decide on Thursday whether to approve a record-setting pay package for Elon Musk that could ultimately give him new stock worth $1 trillion and a roughly 25% stake.
   
• Activist investor Carl Icahn says nothing compares to the thrill of being immersed in a fight. For the past few years, the 89-year-old billionaire has been playing defense on several fronts.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Send tips to our reporters Max Fillion at max.fillion@dowjones.com, Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com and Richard Vanderford at richard.vanderford@wsj.com.

You can also reach us by replying to any newsletter, or by emailing our editor David Smagalla at david.smagalla@wsj.com.