The U.K. last week removed Alex Kande Mupompa from its sanctions regime targeting the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mupompa, a DRC official, was sanctioned for alleged human rights violations, including his ties to the "disproportionate use of force, violent repression and extrajudicial killings" by DRC security forces. The U.K. announcement came after an EU court in 2024 annulled Mupompa's designation, according to an unofficial translation.
The U.K., France and Germany will support snapback sanctions against Iran if the country doesn’t agree to safeguards around its nuclear program by the end of this month, the three European nations said last week.
The future effectiveness of U.S. export controls will depend on which technologies the government targets, how it collaborates with allies, and how well the U.S. is able to resource the Bureau of Industry and Security, said Navin Girishankar and Matt Borman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Citing national security and legal concerns, seven Democratic lawmakers called on the Trump administration Aug. 15 to reverse its decision to allow Nvidia and AMD to sell certain controlled computing chips to China in exchange for a portion of their sales revenue.
Applied Materials, the largest American semiconductor equipment supplier, is expecting a drop in its China sales due to uncertainty around U.S. export controls and its high volume of pending license applications, executives said last week.
China is launching an expiry review of antidumping duties on single-mode optical fibers imported from India, the Ministry of Commerce said this week, according to an unofficial translation. China said it's maintaining existing duties during the review, which range from 7.4% to 30.6%. The country is accepting public comments for 20 days from Aug. 13 and expects to complete the review within one year.
The State Department this week approved a possible $346 million military sale to Nigeria, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said. The sale includes munitions, precision bombs, precision rockets and related equipment, and the principal contractors will be RTX Missiles and Defense, Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems.
President Donald Trump signed a new executive order Aug. 13 aimed at deregulating the commercial space sector, which it said will help make American space launch companies more competitive. The order doesn't explicitly mention the loosening of export or trade restrictions, but it directs the Commerce and Transportation departments, along with other government offices, to create a "streamlined process for authorizing novel space activities (missions not clearly or straightforwardly governed by existing regulatory frameworks) with the goal of enabling American space competitiveness and superiority in new space-based industries."
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., called on the Bureau of Industry and Security Aug. 14 to return China’s Institute of Forensic Science to the BIS Entity List, citing the lab’s "continual and well-documented" human rights abuses.
The U.S. this week sanctioned Mexican cartels Carteles Unidos and Los Viagras along with seven people that it said work closely with the cartels and are linked to terrorism, drug trafficking and extortion.