The Biden administration should wait to place new export controls on the semiconductor industry until it adequately assesses the impact of its existing restrictions, the Semiconductor Industry Association said this week. The U.S. chip industry should be able to continue accessing the China market, SIA said, warning that “repeated steps” to “impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions risk diminishing the U.S. semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty, and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China.”
Exports to China
Akin added three partners from Hughes Hubbard to its Washington, D.C., office, the firm announced. Ryan Fayhee, a former national security official at DOJ, will advise clients on sanctions and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. reviews, incident response and compliance best practices. Roy Liu will focus on U.S.-China trade matters, sanctions, export controls, customs cases and CFIUS proceedings, and Tyler Grove will focus on sanctions and trade regulations.
The Commerce Department published its spring 2023 regulatory agenda for the Bureau of Industry and Security and the Census Bureau, including new rules that will add more entities to the Entity List and finalize new export filing requirements.
The House last week voted 219-210 to pass its version of the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act with several trade related provisions and amendments, including one amendment that would prohibit “any form of sanctions relief” for the Taliban “unless explicitly authorized by Congress in subsequent legislation.” Another provision would block the Defense Department from entering into a procurement contract with any person or entity that has “business operations” with the Russian government, while another “exhorts” the Defense Department to “commit resources” to make sure “foreign military sales officers in the Department are fully staffed to support the fulsome review and expedient transfer of defense articles” to Australia and the U.K.
The U.S. may need to address export control loopholes to better prevent China and others from acquiring sensitive technologies, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said, but he also cautioned the U.S. against imposing controls that are too broad and said they need to be coordinated with allies.
Republicans last week criticized the Biden administration’s “lack of sanctions enforcement” against Iran, saying the country continues to sell oil to China and use those profits to support Russia’s war against Ukraine. The lawmakers called on the Treasury and State departments to develop a strategy to “prevent Iran’s petrochemical industry from supporting the regime’s nefarious activities,” saying the strategy should include more sanctions against Chinese people and companies buying Iranian energy.
Canada launched investigations of Nike Canada and Dynasty Gold this week after receiving complaints that both companies’ supply chains have ties to forced labor in China. A Canadian agency said it’s probing allegations that Nike has “supply relationships” with Chinese companies that use Uyghur forced labor and that Dynasty Gold, a mining company, benefited from Uyghur forced labor at a Chinese mine in which it had a majority stake.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned 10 people and one company involved in illegal Mexican drug trafficking, including precursor chemicals used in fentanyl. Those designated have ties to Mexico-based Sinaloa Cartel, OFAC said, and the measures follow a series of similar sanctions related to the group in recent months (see 2305090022, 2304140051 and 2301300010).
Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, subpoenaed the State Department for “key documents” relating to the agency’s reported “obstruction of the use of national security tools” against China, his office said in a July 12 press release. McCaul signed the subpoena about two months after he originally requested the documents from the State Department, citing news reports that the agency held back sanctions and export controls against China in an effort to limit damage to the U.S.-China relationship (see 2305240041).
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