The Bureau of Industry and Security is planning to soon issue a rule that will offer clarifications and corrections to its recently updated export controls on advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment, said Thea Kendler, the agency’s assistant secretary for export administration (see 2310170055).

The Bureau of Industry and Security and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network this week issued another set of export control evasion red flags for financial service firms along with a new key term that banks and others can include in their suspicious activity reports to FinCEN. The new term will “enable even more BIS investigative and Entity List actions against” people and companies looking to evade U.S. export controls, said Matthew Axelrod, BIS’ top export enforcement official.

Mary Thornton, former head of trade and export controls policy at Amazon Web Services, joined the Semiconductor Industry Association as vice president of global policy, SIA announced Nov. 2. Thornton will lead SIA’s global trade and economic security policy initiatives. Before joining Amazon, she was a senior trade negotiator with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, where she served as the U.S. trade attache to the World Trade Organization.

The Treasury Department should “urgently” implement the administration's executive order on outbound investments (see 2308090066), including by adopting a broad definition of the three technology sectors covered under the order, said Reps. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., the chairs of the House Select Committee on China. The lawmakers also called for the U.S. to do more to convince allies to put in place their own outbound investment screening tools and to pursue additional restrictions on outbound passive investments, including in index funds.

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Trade ministers from Japan, the U.S., the EU, the U.K., France, Canada, Germany and Italy said they will work to reach an agreement on World Trade Organization reform "with the view to having a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024." The binding appellate level of dispute settlement at the WTO has been defunct since late 2019, because the U.S. blocked all appointments to the appellate body.

The EU for the first time released a compilation of member states' national export control lists, allowing member state nations to "impose authorisation requirements on exports of items included in other Member States’ control lists, as long as these are included in the Commission’s own compilation," the commission's Directorate-General for Trade announced. The first list is made up of Dutch controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment as well as Spanish controls on quantum computing technology, additive manufacturing and other emerging technologies, the commission said. The EU will update the list as member states report new or amended export control measures.

The U.S. should convince Japan, the Netherlands and other allies to restrict exports of lower-level chipmaking equipment to China to prevent Beijing from becoming the global leader in the "foundational" semiconductors those tools can produce, the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank said in a new report last week. The report warned that current restrictions on advanced equipment risks pushing China to instead dominate the foundational chip sector, which will increase the likelihood that those semiconductors will be incorporated in U.S. defense technologies and could help Chinese companies “climb the value chain in leading-edge nodes, whether through legitimate or illegitimate means.”

The reporting requirements being considered by the Treasury Department as part of its upcoming outbound investment rules (see 2308090066 and 2310050035) are "quite broad,” Akin Gump lawyer Laura Black said, adding that they will require companies to report on how certain investments fit into their business plans in the U.S. as well as the contractual and government relationships held by their Chinese clients. Black, speaking during an Oct. 25 webinar hosted by the Massachusetts Export Center, said those requirements could increase compliance costs for U.S. companies and create challenges for their Chinese partners, who are subject to strict disclosure laws by the Chinese government.

The Bureau of Industry and Security on Nov. 6 will hold a public briefing on its recently updated export controls on advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment (see 2310170055). The briefing, which also will cover the agency’s addition this month of 13 Chinese semiconductor and technology companies to the Entity List (see 2310170063), will be led by Assistant Secretary for Export Administration Thea Kendler, who will “address important aspects” of the new restrictions.