The Bureau of Industry and Security fined a California business owner $540,000 and suspended his export privileges after he allegedly caused false information to be submitted on controlled exports to Russia, BIS said Jan. 27. The agency said Julian Demurjian, who owned CIS Project, violated the Export Administration Regulations when he provided false values for exports of telecommunication equipment controlled for national security, encryption and anti-terrorism reasons.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, President Joe Biden’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said she would support sanctions against China and will lead an effort to stop the country from taking over international standards-setting bodies. She said she also will take aggressive measures to counter China’s growing role at the United Nations and its human rights violations. “I see that as my highest priority,” she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jan. 27 during confirmation proceedings.

Singapore Customs on Jan. 21 issued a range of updated trade statistics covering the past several years. The statistics outline yearly and monthly duty collections, the number of yearly permits and licenses issued by the agency, and yearly enforcement figures for customs violations.

China warned President Joe Biden not to follow the same adversarial path that the Trump administration took on China policies, urging the new administration to help strengthen bilateral relations in an “objective and rational manner.” Biden should “learn from the Trump administration’s lessons where they carried out the wrong policies on China,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Jan. 26. The countries have “broad common interests and shoulder special, major responsibilities in safeguarding world peace and stability.” China’s comments came one day after the White House said it views China as a strategic competitor and will work to counter the country’s illegal trade practices (see 2101250049).

China updated its safeguard duties for certain imports of Australian fresh and frozen beef and certain dairy products, its customs office said Jan. 25, according to an unofficial translation. The notice contains a new import volume “trigger level” in 2021 for each of the products, which are listed under eight tariff lines.

China and New Zealand updated their 12-year-old free trade agreement to increase trade in goods, revise certain rules of origin and address technical barriers to trade, China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reported Jan. 26. The deal's provisions include addressing trade barriers on certain wood and paper products and requiring New Zealand to lower its threshold for reviewing Chinese investments.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control updated its sanctions list search tool to include “fuzzy logic that is more resource efficient,” a Jan. 25 notice said. The changes will improve the performance and responsiveness of the search tool, OFAC said. Users “may see differences between search results from the previous version of the tool and the newer version.”

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories for Jan. 19-22 in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Electronics industry association SEMI called for industry input on a review of Trump administration export control policies, in a Jan. 25 letter to secretary of commerce nominee Gina Raimondo. The trade group said the prior administration made drastic changes to export control regulations without allowing enough industry input, and said the new administration should formally hear industry concerns.

Gina Raimondo, President Joe Biden’s nominee for commerce secretary, declined to say whether she plans to keep Huawei and other Chinese technology companies on the Entity List but made clear that Commerce will aggressively tackle illegal Chinese trade practices and human rights abuses. Speaking before the Senate Commerce Committee Jan. 26, Raimondo told lawmakers that the agency won’t make decisions on Chinese trade restrictions until completing a sweeping review of the measures and assessing their impact on U.S. national security (see 2101250049). “The President has been clear that we need to step back and review broadly our trade policies as it relates to China,” Raimondo said.