Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was critical last week of U.S. policies that he said are restricting the company from selling its advanced chips in China and pushed back on claims that Nvidia AI processors are being smuggled into the country.

Adam Vaccaro, former director of the Treasury Department's Office of Investment Security, has joined DLA Piper in Washington, the firm said Dec. 3. Vaccaro joined Treasury in 2019 to help lead the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. before leaving the agency this month, according to his LinkedIn profile. DLA Piper also called him "one of the primary authors" of Treasury's outbound investment security program.

Sens. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., and Chris Coons, D-Del., announced Dec. 4 that they have introduced a bill to codify into law the Trump administration’s current limits on what advanced AI chips can be sold to China and other foreign “adversaries.”

The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved several sanctions and export control bills Dec. 3, including the Sanctions Lists Harmonization Act, which would require a review of whether individuals or entities included on certain sanctions lists should be included on other sanctions lists (see 2507070022).

The Council of the European Union on Dec. 4 extended its human rights sanctions list for one year, pushing the restrictions to Dec. 8, 2026. The sanctions currently apply to 135 individuals and 37 entities.

The U.K. added three Russian intelligence officers and the Russian intelligence agency to its Russia sanctions list on Dec. 4. Vladimir Lipchenko, Yuriy Sizov and Denis Smolyaninov were sanctioned by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation for coordinating "sabotage operations in Ukraine." The intelligence agency is the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, known as GRU.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week renewed and revised the language in a general license that authorizes certain transactions involving Lukoil retail service stations located outside Russia.

The Office of the Federal Register published a correction this week to a Commerce Control List that appeared in the most recent annual revision of the Code of Federal Regulations. It fixes an error in the language that describes certain "materials" controlled in the CCL, including metals and alloys.

The Bureau of Industry and Security again renewed a temporary denial order for Siberian Airlines after saying the Russian airline continues to illegally operate aircraft on flights into and out of Russia. The airline has acted in "blatant disregard for U.S. export controls and the terms of previously issued" denial orders, BIS said, pointing to several recent flights it has operated to and from Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan. The agency renewed the order for one year from Dec. 3.

The Trump administration has halted plans to sanction a Chinese spy agency and will refrain from imposing any “major new export controls” on China to avoid disrupting the trade truce reached between the two sides in South Korea earlier this year, the Financial Times reported.