The Biden administration will soon add another industry advisory committee to provide input on U.S. export control regulations.
The House Oversight Committee is probing the Bureau of Industry and Security's 90-day suspension of new export licenses for firearms, saying the potentially “extralegal” decision was made with no explanation and infringes on the Commerce Department’s goal of increasing U.S. competitiveness. Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., in a letter this week to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, requested a briefing on the issue by Dec. 5 and asked for a range of agency documents before Dec. 12, including any related to the decision-making process that led to the suspension announcement.
The Commerce Department quietly stopped approving new licenses for firearms exports to three Latin American countries months before publicly announcing a broader suspension in October for dozens of other nations.
The Commerce and Treasury departments earlier this month co-hosted a virtual “exchange” with small to mid-sized financial institutions, law enforcement and government agencies to discuss Russian attempts to evade export controls, the agencies announced Nov. 21. The exchange included officials from the Bureau of Industry and Security, the Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and “exemplified the ongoing U.S. Government effort to further constrain and prevent Russia from accessing the international financial system and conduct economic activity to fund its invasion of Ukraine,” Treasury said. The effort came about a week after BIS and FinCEN issued another set of export control evasion red flags for financial services firms along with a new key term that banks and others can include in their suspicious activity reports (see 2311060055).
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week removed a Chinese scientific institute from the Entity List that the agency had originally added in 2020 for ties to human rights abuses in Xinjiang (see 2005220058). The move, outlined in a final rule effective Nov. 16, removed the Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science of China from the list.
CBP this week updated the Automated Export System’s Trade Interface Requirements License and License Exemption Type Codes to add a new export information code for License Type C60, the agency said in a CSMS message. CBP said the Census Bureau requested the update, which added Export Information Code MS for License Code C60, a code used to accompany exports of 600 series items, which include certain defense and dual-use items overseen by the Commerce Department. CBP said AES users should contact Census if they have questions.
As the Bureau of Industry and Security adds new export controls on emerging technologies, it should also remove outdated restrictions on items that may no longer warrant licensing requirements, such as life jackets and fire extinguishers, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a report. The think tank also urged BIS to shrink the Entity List to only entities that pose the most serious national security threats and consider giving preferential licensing treatment to a broader set of countries, including Vietnam and Moldova.
Congress should order a review of U.S. semiconductor export controls against China and ask the administration to create a public database of entities connected to China’s military, which would help U.S. companies with their compliance practices, a congressional commission said this week. The bipartisan commission also said Congress should explore the idea of a single export licensing system to streamline export requirements overseen by both the Commerce and State departments.
The U.S. should have placed export controls on a broader range of semiconductors, including legacy chips, as part of its efforts over the last year to restrict sales of advanced semiconductors to China, said Nazak Nikakhtar, a former acting Bureau of Industry and Security undersecretary. She said a lack of legacy chip controls is allowing China to dominate that sector of the industry and grab market share away from companies in the U.S. and its allies, including South Korea and Taiwan.
DOJ-Commerce Department Disruptive Technology Strike Force senior officials traveled to Ukraine last week to speak with Ukrainian officials about Russia-related export enforcement and ways the two sides can better share information. The delegation -- which included Matthew Axelrod, Commerce’s top export enforcement official, and Matthew Olsen, the head of DOJ’s National Security Division -- spoke about efforts to “stop the flow of sensitive technologies to aid the Russian war machine,” the Bureau of Industry and Security said in a readout of the meetings.