2 Trump Cabinet Picks Favor Tighter Export Controls on China

Rubio, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has advocated for increasing export restrictions on China, stepping up enforcement of Iran sanctions, and maintaining sanctions on Cuba. He has been a prolific author of bills, letters and statements on these matters.

The senator has urged the Bureau of Industry and Security to take more action to stem the flow of U.S.-made advanced computing chips to China (see 2409030029). He has expressed concern that “major weaknesses” in BIS export controls enable companies with ties to China’s military to obtain such chips.

"Cutting-edge chips are some of America’s most advanced developments in computer hardware," Rubio wrote in a September letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. "Preventing America’s adversaries from weaponizing these components for nefarious purposes is vital to our national security."

Rubio has also called for revoking all export licenses to China’s Huawei (see 2404260031), placing Chinese electric vehicle battery producer Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. (CATL) on the Defense Department’s Section 1260H list of Chinese military companies (see 2408280050), and expanding sanctions against China for human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority group in the Xinjiang region (see 2305310024).

On Iran, Rubio has pushed for boosting enforcement of oil sanctions to curb Tehran’s ability to fund terrorism (see 2402010058). He has sought swift implementation of new Iran sanctions that were signed into law in April (see 2409190053), and has called for designating the Iran-backed Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (see 2411060003).

On Latin America, Rubio has opposed removing Cuba from the State Department’s state sponsors of terrorism list (see 2408130002) and has resisted easing financial sanctions on Cuba (see 2405290080). He has sought to use sanctions to pressure the Venezuelan regime to concede it lost the country’s July presidential election (see 2409260049).

Like Rubio, Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., has favored a harder line on China, including tightening export restrictions on artificial intelligence technologies destined for the Asian country (see 2306050037).

“At the end of the day, we've seen this time and time again, where our technology is reverse engineered” by a subsidized company in China, which then “prices us out of the market and then they begin gobbling up market share, and not only creating independence, but creating global dependencies,” Waltz said last year. “And that's something that is just fantastically dangerous to our national security.”

Waltz, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also has sought to modernize export controls more broadly, such as by proposing legislation to make inflation-based adjustments to the dollar thresholds that trigger congressional notification of arms sales (see 2402070048).

Another Waltz bill would require an agency that adds an entity to its export control or sanctions list to notify other agencies about its actions (see 2312130053). Rubio introduced a companion bill in the Senate, saying it would improve coordination among the agencies and “prevent bad actors, such as Communist China, Russia and Iran, from taking advantage of a disjointed policy” (see 2409120061).