Nine Republican senators on March 10 reintroduced a bill that they said will make the U.S. more competitive with China and counter illegal Chinese trade practices. The bill, originally introduced last year, would “tackle” Chinese efforts to “distort global markets” and allow U.S. technology companies to better compete with China by “increasing technology collaboration with allies and partners.” The bill also includes several policy statements about export controls and sanctions, and stresses that the U.S. should be “crafting multilateral export control measures” with allies and with multilateral control groups, including the Wassenaar Arrangement. Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who helped craft the bill, said the legislation may have bipartisan support. “We are committed to working with our Democratic colleagues to ensure the United States and its allies and partners are prepared for this competition,” he said.
Exports to China
Don Graves, President Joe Biden’s nominee for deputy commerce secretary, said export restrictions shouldn’t be removed from Huawei and that the Commerce Department should do more to promote U.S. leadership at international technology standards setting bodies. Graves also said he is open to imposing more export controls and other restrictions against China for human rights violations.
The U.S. needs to modernize its approach to export controls and expand disclosure requirements for foreign investment screening to maintain its technology dominance over China, a U.S. national security commission said in a report this week. The commission called current U.S. export controls outdated, urged the Commerce Department to more quickly control emerging and foundational technologies, and said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. should review a broader set of transactions to protect sensitive technologies.
In written questions to U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai, she was pressed to argue for U.S. agricultural export interests around the world, and asked how China could be moved to meet more of its promises to buy American exports, agricultural and otherwise.
Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., reintroduced a bill Feb. 18 that would control the export of certain technology and intellectual property to China. The legislation was previously introduced in 2019, and it is among a slate of bills “to confront the Chinese Communist Party’s malign influence” reintroduced by Green.
A Commerce Department rule designed to cut off U.S. shipments to foreign military intelligence agencies in China, Russia and beyond could create a host of due-diligence issues for exporters, industry lawyers said. Those issues could be compounded by industry uncertainty surrounding the scope of the rule, which may be unclear without BIS guidance. “We're getting an enormous number of questions,” said Giovanna Cinelli, an export control lawyer with Morgan Lewis. “I think the rule is open to interpretation, and that’s creating uncertainty.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, one of the most prominent China hawks in Congress, thinks that the Bureau of Industry and Security is buried within an organization “hostile to the aggressive use of export controls,” and so it should be moved from the Commerce Department to the State Department, because, he says, that department puts national security first. Cotton, who has published a lengthy report on what he calls the economic long war with China, discussed his views during an online program at the Reagan Presidential Foundation on Feb. 18.
China is looking into the prospect of placing export controls on rare earth minerals crucial for the manufacture of U.S. F-35 fighter jets and other crucial weaponry, according to a report in The Financial Times. The details of the proposed controls come a month after China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology proposed draft controls on the production and export of 17 rare earth minerals in China -- the country that controls about 80% of global supply. “The government wants to know if the US may have trouble making F-35 fighter jets if China imposes an export ban,” said a Chinese government adviser who asked not to be identified.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said the Bureau of Industry and Security isn’t complying with congressional oversight requirements because it hasn’t yet provided him with information about its China licensing process that he requested in November. After McCaul requested “detailed information” on how BIS licenses U.S. technology to Chinese entities, BIS told him the data was “too difficult and time-consuming to compile,” McCaul said Feb. 16. But McCaul said BIS allowed “the same information to be shared with the media,” referencing a Feb 11 Reuters report on Huawei restrictions (see 2102120008). McCaul called BIS’s actions “completely inappropriate and only furthers my concerns that BIS has not woken up to the growing threat of the Chinese Community Party.” A BIS spokesperson didn’t comment.
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