Four Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, sent Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo a series of recommendations for strengthening firearms export controls, Warren’s office said Jan. 24.
Marc Selinger
Marc Selinger, Assistant Editor, is the congressional reporter for Export Compliance Daily, which he joined in December 2023. He previously wrote for a variety of defense publications, highlights of which included covering the Paris and Farnborough (UK) air shows and touring the Israeli defense industry. His first full-time journalism job involved reporting on local government, schools and police news for a community newspaper in Michigan. He is on X at @marcselinger and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-selinger-315089173/.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Jan. 24 approved a bill that would authorize the government to seize about $5 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets in the U.S. to help pay for rebuilding Ukraine.
The leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight have asked the Government Accountability Office to assess the effectiveness of new export controls aimed at preventing China from obtaining advanced computing chips and the equipment to manufacture them.
A 2022 Bureau of Industry and Security policy change has continued to lead to improved Chinese cooperation with BIS end-use checks, an agency official said Jan. 23.
USDA needs to improve how it collects, tracks and shares information on foreign investment in U.S. farmland, the Government Accountability Office wrote in a report released on Jan. 18.
The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Western Hemisphere Subcommittee urged the Biden administration on Jan. 18 to end Cuba’s “baseless, extremely harmful” designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.
The Bureau of Industry and Security believes its export controls are adequate to protect all 19 of the critical and emerging technology categories identified by the White House as important to national security (see 2202090016), a BIS official said on Jan. 17.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said Jan. 18 that he remains committed to passing two China-related investment measures that failed to become law last year.
The State Department gathered an undisclosed “group of countries” last week to “strategize” on ways to curb the supply of parts to Iranian drones, a department official said Jan. 17.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., urged USDA and the Treasury Department to review how Chinese businessman Chen Tianqiao was able to buy almost 200,000 acres of Oregon farmland in 2015 without disclosing the purchase to the federal government.