The Export Control Reform Act may not result in significantly different controls on emerging technologies (see 1912130055) than what would have been proposed under the U.S.’s existing export control system, a former top Commerce Department official said. Eric Hirschhorn, former undersecretary for the Bureau of Industry and Security from 2010-2017, also said Commerce’s efforts to restrict sales of foundational technologies might be too late. “I have grave doubt whether the assignment to control emerging and foundational technologies will result in controls significantly different from what the existing system -- which operates fairly well -- would have produced,” Hirschhorn said in a Jan. 3 post for China Business Review.
The Commerce Department is amending the Export Administration Regulations to control exports of software designed to “automate the analysis of geospatial imagery,” Commerce said in an interim final rule. The software will be controlled under the Export Control Classification Number 0Y521 series -- a temporary holding classification that lasts for one year from the day the final rule is published. Although the agency believes it is in the U.S.’s national security interest to “immediately” control this software, Commerce is seeking comments on the interim final rule. Comments are due March 6.
More than half of the sanctions-related enforcement actions issued by the Treasury Department in 2019 involved supply chain violations, signaling that supply chain compliance is one of the most important factors in avoiding violations, according to a December report released by Kharon, a sanctions advisory firm. The penalties are mostly due to deficiencies in three main areas of supply chain compliance, Kharon said: companies that operated in “heightened-risk jurisdictions,” companies that operated “existing and newly acquired” foreign subsidiaries, and companies that showed deficiencies while monitoring actors in its supply chain.
President Donald Trump signed the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, S. 1790 into law, with provisions targeting tech companies Huawei and ZTE (see 1912130027), the White House announced on Dec. 20. The law bars the Trump administration from lifting the Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security's addition of Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei to its export entity blacklist without congressional approval. The law also requires reports to Congress on waivers issued to companies doing business with Huawei as well as ZTE's compliance with a 2018 agreement that lifted Commerce's ban on U.S. companies selling telecom software and equipment to ZTE.
The State Department published an interim final rule that will revise the International Traffic in Arms Regulations to provide definitions for activities that are not exports, re-exports, retransfers or temporary imports, the agency said in a notice in the Federal Register. The activities include launching items into space, providing technical data to U.S. people within the U.S. or “within a single country abroad,” and moving defense items within the U.S.
U.S. companies and exporters have not told the Trump administration that sanctions on Venezuela are hurting their business, according to Elliott Abrams, the State Department’s special representative for Venezuela. As the U.S. continues one of its most active sanctions regimes (see 1911190028) against a country it says is marred by corruption and human rights abuses, companies are becoming more understanding of U.S. foreign policy goals, Abrams said.
The end-of-the-year appropriations compromise worked out between the House and Senate will add tens of millions of dollars for trade enforcement and port technology. The bill, which is expected to pass the Senate by Dec. 20 and has already passed the House of Representatives, will also spend $54 million for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
The Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security issued a correction for end-user information in the Code of Federal Regulations, in a notice in the Federal Register. The notice corrects an entry for Ibrahim Haqqani under Afghanistan.
The Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security's upcoming proposed rules on emerging technologies will be narrow, impacting only specific slices of technologies, according to a Dec. 17 Reuters report. Commerce is finalizing proposed rules on quantum diluted refrigerators, a rule regulating 3D printing for explosives, “Gate-All-Around Field Effect transistor technology” (GAAFET) and two rules restricting sales of chemicals used to make Russian nerve agent Novichok and “single-use chambers for chemical reactions,” Reuters said. A Commerce rule for GAAFET is in the proposed rule stage, according to a recent Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs notice. A top Commerce official recently pinpointed six categories in which the agency plans to propose the rules (see 1912160032), and BIS officials have said for months the rules will be narrow (see 1912160006, 1911200045 and 1906280057).
A bipartisan group of more than 45 lawmakers urged the Trump administration to impose strict sanctions on China’s treatment of its Uighur population, saying the October addition of 28 Chinese entities to the Commerce Department’s Entity List (see 1910070076) was not enough. “These measures were a first step that do not go far enough in ensuring accountability for China’s government and Communist Party,” the lawmakers said in a Dec. 12 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.