The Senate should move forward with bipartisan legislation that would give the administration stronger authorities to penalize and investigate sanctioned Russian oligarchs and tackle broader sanctions evasion issues (see 2207200020), senators said during a hearing this week. But Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said Congress shouldn’t be too quick to expand some of the Biden administration’s proposals, which could expand DOJ authorities unrelated to Russia.
Two senators plan to introduce a bill that would impose mandatory sanctions against any foreign financial entity not complying with the G-7's and EU’s upcoming price cap on Russian oil. The bill, which is still being drafted, has bipartisan support on Capitol Hill but not from the Treasury Department, with one official suggesting the legislation is unnecessary.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. should require TikTok to cut ties with China-based ByteDance and all other Chinese companies, Sen. Josh Hawley, R- Mo., wrote in a Sept. 19 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Hawley said TikTok’s COO told Congress last week that the company’s Chinese engineers are able to access U.S. user data and that TikTok “has taken no measures to ensure that the employees in China accessing this data are not members of the Chinese Communist Party.”
U.S.-based Snapdragon Chemistry, a drug services company, said China-based pharmaceutical firm Asymchem won't acquire it after the companies failed to receive approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. The two companies, which first announced the acquisition in February, were “unable to agree to mitigation terms that would satisfy” CFIUS, Snapdragon said this month. “We are disappointed this deal was unable to be completed," Snapdragon CEO Matthew Bio said. "The goal of the deal was to expand domestic manufacturing capacity and be able to deliver a full range of drug development services to our clients.”
CBP’s Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee is urging more members of industry to participate in CBP’s electronic export manifest pilot (see 2205060015) before the process becomes mandatory. During a Sept. 14 COAC meeting, the Export Modernization Working Group presented a paper outlining the benefits for shippers who participate in the pilot, saying participants “will be prepared for the new rule and will experience minimal business disruption when the EEM goes into effect.”
President Joe Biden this week signed the first executive order to give specific presidential direction to how the U.S. conducts foreign direct investment reviews, a move officials hope will sharpen the country's focus on sensitive technologies, personal data and other national security-related issues.
Despite the fact that the administration has not opened any formal free trade agreement negotiations in two years, the House Ways and Means Committee chairman said he's confident a trade agreement can be reached with Taiwan.
President Joe Biden plans to sign an executive order today to guide how the U.S. conducts national security reviews over inbound foreign direct investments. The order, which is the first to give formal presidential direction to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., will add “several national security factors” for CFIUS to consider when reviewing covered transactions and expand on the committee’s “existing statutory factors,” senior administration officials said during a Sept. 14 call with reporters. Biden will specifically direct CFIUS to consider a covered transaction's impact on critical U.S. supply chains, U.S. technological leadership (including for microelectronics and artificial intelligence), U.S. cybersecurity, personal sensitive data and more.
A new Commerce Department rule aimed at making it easier for certain U.S. technologies to be shared at standards-setting bodies will “undermine” U.S. efforts to protect those sensitive technologies from being acquired by China, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said. Although the rule, issued last week (see 2209080038), sought to allow the participation of U.S. companies in international standards bodies that have members on the Entity List, McCaul said it also undermines U.S. export restrictions. “Companies that are entity-listed are threats to national security, and we need real safeguards to ensure sensitive technology is not transferred to these bad actors,” said McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
After several years of delays, Commerce Department officials said industry may soon see progress on the agency’s long-awaited routed export rule. Although the rule is unlikely to be published this year, officials this week said they are hoping to prioritize the effort in the coming months, which could include major changes to the process around assigning filing responsibilities to forwarders and address information sharing among parties in routed export transactions (see 2006020049).