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.
Ian Cohen
Ian Cohen, Deputy Managing Editor, is a reporter with Export Compliance Daily and its sister publications International Trade Today and Trade Law Daily, where he covers export controls, sanctions and international trade issues. He previously worked as a local government reporter in South Florida. Ian graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Florida in 2017 and lives in Washington, D.C. He joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2019.
The Joe Biden administration has begun a comprehensive review of U.S. trade policies involving China, including several of the restrictions imposed by the Trump administration during its final months, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. Among those restrictions is the export controls placed on goods destined for Huawei (see 2012210044).
The Department of Defense is revising its process for identifying critical technologies that should be subject to export controls after the Government Accountability Office said its current process is too broad and lacks interagency coordination. Although the DOD is tasked with sharing a list of critical technologies with agencies that oversee export controls -- including the State, Commerce and Treasury departments -- officials at all three agencies said they sometimes don’t receive the list. None of the agencies received the list in 2019, the GAO said, even though it could have helped them better protect against trade theft and illegal exports.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. will maintain its focus on Chinese investment, prioritize enforcement and continue to tweak its jurisdiction under the Joe Biden administration (see 2009170017 and 2010270050), trade lawyers said. CFIUS also will likely continue to see an increase in filings, the lawyers said.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is working on several new proposed rules for emerging technologies and is still sifting through industry comments on potential controls for surveillance technologies, the agency said in its 2020 report to Congress this month. Along with its work on emerging technologies last year, the agency said it nearly doubled its civil penalties from 2019, processed about 3,000 more export license applications, and met with a range of trading partners and multilateral export regimes to discuss improvements to export controls.
The State Department updated its review policy for approving certain exports of precision-guided weapons to better ensure the items will not be used to harm civilians or abuse human rights. The change will affect license application reviews for direct commercial sales (DCS) of U.S. precision-guided munitions (PGM), the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls said this week, which will better align the review policy for DCS with the agency’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
The U.S. will no longer impose a presumption of denial policy for export license applications for Sudan but will still limit which export license exceptions can be used for those exports, the Bureau of Industry and Security said in a Jan. 19 guidance. The guidance, issued less than a week after BIS amended Sudan’s status to loosen certain restrictions in the Export Administration Regulations (see 2101140018), also covered how BIS will control exports of aircraft, encrypted telecommunication items and anti-terrorism controlled items.
The U.S. should increase efforts to counter China’s unfair trading practices and human rights violations and work closer with allies on trade restrictions, two of President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees told Congress. Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary nominee, and Avril Haines, the nominee for the director of national intelligence, both said the incoming administration will continue to pressure China on unfair subsidies, intellectual property theft and other trade issues.
The State Department expanded the scope of its sanctions authorities on Iran’s metals sector (see 1905080065) by identifying 15 materials used in the country’s nuclear, military and ballistic missile programs, a Jan. 15 news release said. The agency said people or companies that “knowingly transfer” the materials are now sanctionable under the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act. The State Department also continued its sanctions authority targeting Iran’s construction sector after determining that the U.S.-sanctioned Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still controls the sector.
Congress and the incoming administration should strengthen and maintain a range of export controls and sanctions to prevent China from acquiring sensitive U.S. technologies and items used for repression, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China said in its 2020 annual report. The report and an executive summary, issued Jan. 14, urge the U.S. to continue to dedicate resources to restrict exports to China in order to prevent human rights violations.