The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week issued a new guidance to make non-governmental organizations and others aware of the licenses and authorizations available for humanitarian-related transactions involving the Palestinian people. OFAC stressed that its “sanctions do not stand in the way of legitimate humanitarian assistance” to the region, and the guidance outlines what types of transactions and services are allowed.
The U.S. and the U.K. this week released a new round of sanctions against people and entities helping to finance the terror group Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The designations target various PIJ and Hamas officials, a Lebanon-based money exchange company and others.
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As the Bureau of Industry and Security adds new export controls on emerging technologies, it should also remove outdated restrictions on items that may no longer warrant licensing requirements, such as life jackets and fire extinguishers, the Center for Strategic and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 European Council on Nov. 13 renewed its sanctions on Venezuela for another six months, setting them up to now expire on May 14, 2024. The sanctions include an embargo on arms and equipment for internal repression along with an asset freeze on 54 people.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls has resolved an outage that impacted its customer service email address last week, the agency said, adding that it’s processing emails sent during the outage in the order they were received.
President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will touch on some trade issues during a planned meeting in California on Nov. 15, but the two leaders won’t delve into specifics, a senior administration official said during a call with reporters last week. The two sides aren’t expecting a “long list of outcomes or deliverables” to result from the meeting, the official said. “The goals here really are about managing the competition, preventing the downside risk of conflict and ensuring channels of communication are open."
Canada last week announced another set of Russia-related sanctions, targeting nine people and six entities involved in the “Kremlin-backed orchestration of disinformation and war propaganda.” Canada said some of the designated entities are either directly funded by the federal government or receive state grants distributed by Kremlin agents to “spread false narratives and propaganda as if it were expert opinion in an attempt to legitimize” Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Australia last week unveiled proposed reforms to its export control requirements and penalties as it works to harmonize its defense trade regulations with the U.S. The proposals, which include a one-week public comment period, would establish an “export license-free environment” for certain defense and technology trade with the U.S. and the U.K. and criminalize certain violations of Australian export control requirements. The proposals specifically include a new “national exemption” from certain export permit requirements for parties from the U.S. and the U.K., Australia said.