U.S. officials during their trip to China this week outlined expectations for end-use checks in the country and rebuffed requests from Beijing to reduce export restrictions on advanced technology, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said. While the American contingent isn’t leaving China with concrete resolutions to trade issues, she said she believes commitments from both sides to increase communication, including as part of an export control enforcement working group, were a positive first step.
Exports to China
The Biden administration should take an “end-user list-based approach” to restricting investments in Chinese artificial intelligence companies as part of its recent executive order on outbound investment (see 2308090066 and 2308100045), researchers with Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology said in a report this week. The report said the Treasury Department can use its Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies (CMIC) List as a “foundation” by updating and expanding it to restrict AI investments beyond publicly traded securities.
A new House bill with Republican support could establish more congressional oversight on any scientific partnership agreements between the U.S. and China, including the Science and Technology Agreement (STA) that was due to expire Aug. 27 (see 2308070055). The Science and Technology Agreement Enhanced Congressional Notification Act, introduced by Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., last week, would require the State Department to “provide comprehensive details to Congress about any new agreement” and wait at least 30 days “post-submission before proceeding.”
Connecticut-based electronics manufacturer Hubbell Inc. accused freight forwarder DSV of violating U.S. shipping regulations by failing to provide the required service under a negotiated contract, Hubbell said in an Aug. 28 complaint to the Federal Maritime Commission. The manufacturer also accused DSV, headquartered in Denmark, of assessing $900,000 in overbilled or “improper” charges.
The Commerce Department’s new trade working group and export control enforcement initiative with China (see 2308280042) is “at best naive, but also dangerous,” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said. China “steals U.S. intellectual property and hacks the emails of senior government officials,” said McCaul, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee. “The administration must stop treating the [Chinese Communist Party] as anything other than an adversary who will stop at nothing to harm our national security and spread its malign authoritarianism around the globe.”
The U.K.'s Department for International Trade expanded antidumping and countervailing duties on hot-rolled flat products of iron, non-alloy or other alloy steel from China for another five years. In a pair of notices, the DIT said the duties will now expire April 7, 2027. The countervailing duties range from 4.6% to 35.9%, including a 35.9% rate for all other exporters not given an individual rate. The antidumping duties range from zero to 31.3%.
Australia exported its first shipment of barley to China after the Chinese duties on the agricultural product were dropped (see 2308040064), Australian Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said during a news conference. The exports were sent from Kwinana -- a major terminal for grains below Perth operated by CBH Group. China imposed the duties in 2020 due to a breakdown in relations between the two nations.
The State Department fined a U.S.-based specialty chemicals supplier $850,000 for allegedly violating defense export regulations and failing to voluntarily disclose those violations, the agency announced in an order and settlement agreement this week. The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls said Island Pyrochemical Industries Corp. illegally acted as a broker between Brazilian and Chinese companies for shipments of chemicals used in explosives and made false statements on a license application to DDTC.
The U.S. government must take a host of actions to slow down Chinese "techno-economic dominance," including preventing Chinese firms from being listed on U.S. stock markets and limiting investment into China, Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said in an Aug. 28 post.
Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies expect the U.S. will get "a taste of its own medicine” when China appeals its loss over Section 232 retaliatory tariffs at the World Trade Organization, adding that China likely won't have to drop the tariffs since there is no appellate body to take that appeal.