The Bureau of Industry and Security is proposing to clarify and expand restrictions on using License Exception Strategic Trade Authorization (see 2109130013), which it hopes will reduce exporter “confusion” and better control certain sensitive technologies, BIS said Oct. 21.
Tariffs imposed on goods from China during the previous administration likely contributed to the ongoing chip shortage, though an increasing demand and port congestion are bigger factors, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., said. Speaking during an Oct. 20 event hosted by The Washington Post, both underscored the severity of the supply chain crisis and said lawmakers should move faster to pass legislation that would provide more funding to the semiconductor industry.
The Bureau of Industry and Security will issue new export controls on certain cybersecurity items and create a new license exception for those exports, BIS said in an interim final rule released Oct. 20. The rule, which will align U.S. cybersecurity restrictions with controls previously agreed to at the multilateral Wassenaar Arrangement, will establish more restrictions on certain items that can be used for “malicious cyber activities” by imposing a license requirement for shipments to certain countries, BIS said. The changes take effect Jan. 19, and BIS will accept public comments until Dec. 6.
The Treasury Department presented the results of its monthslong sanctions review (see 2107200024, 2107060012 and 2106220037) to the Senate Banking Committee Oct. 19, detailing how it hopes to better coordinate designations with trading partners and establish more modern, effective sanctions regimes. Although some senators applauded the agency’s commitment toward revising its sanctions approach, others questioned Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo about what they said have been several U.S. sanctions failings, including the administration's policies toward Nord Stream 2 and China’s reported purchases of Iranian oil.
RANCHO MIRAGE, California -- CBP is being pushed to move faster on its electronic export manifest after delays have pushed back its full release to at least next year, said Jim Swanson, director of the agency’s Cargo and Security Controls Division. He pointed to a “variety of reasons” CBP hasn’t yet been able to mandate the use of EEM, including “limited participation” in the pilot program. “I can tell you right now I have a lot of internal pressure from various parts of the government asking us why don't we have this up and running,” Swanson said Oct. 15 during the Western Cargo Conference.
RANCHO MIRAGE, California -- The Commerce Department and CBP will soon deploy a new feature in the Automated Export System to automatically warn filers if they are exporting a controlled item without a license, a BIS official said. The agencies hope to launch the feature -- which should help exporters, freight forwarders and carriers better conduct due diligence -- in the next few months, said Richard Sylvestri, a senior export administration analyst in the Bureau of Industry and Security's Western Regional Office.
A multinational semiconductor company may have violated U.S. export controls when it transacted with two Chinese technology companies on the Entity List, according to its October Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Arteris, which is headquartered in California, said it maintained a business “relationship” with HiSilicon Technologies Co. and Chongxin Bada Technology Development Co., Ltd., which may have resulted in “inadvertent” violations of the Export Administration Regulations. The Bureau of Industry and Security added HiSilicon to the Entity List in 2019 as an affiliate of Huawei (see 1905160072) and added Bada in 2020 (see 2008260038).
U.S. intervention in the transaction between South Korea’s Magnachip Semiconductor Corp. and Beijing’s Wise Road Capital could set a new precedent for investment reviews and lead to more extraterritorial screening by U.S. trading partners in Europe and elsewhere, lawyers said.
The U.S. and more than 30 other countries are meeting virtually this week to discuss how to better counter and disrupt ransomware attacks, including through sanctions, the White House said Oct. 13. The meetings come less than a month after the U.S. sanctioned SUEX, a large virtual currency exchange, for helping to facilitate transactions related to illegal ransomware attacks (see 2109210031). The White House said the Treasury Department “will continue to disrupt and hold accountable these ransomware actors and their money laundering networks,” and the meetings this week could be a forum for discussing multilateral actions.
The Bureau of Industry and Security fined a U.S.-based telecommunications company $1.87 million for illegally exporting goods to Vietnam, BIS said in an Oct. 12 order. California-based VTA Telecom, a subsidiary of a Vietnamese state-owned telecom company, included false statements in its export applications to hide the true end-uses for the exports, BIS said.