US Trending Toward Broader, More Unilateral Export Controls, Industry Official Says
U.S. export controls are increasingly trending toward unilateral, extraterritorial restrictions as opposed to multilateral ones, and that could continue under the administration of President Donald Trump, said Jeannette Chu, vice president for national security policy at the National Foreign Trade Council.
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Chu, speaking during a virtual conference last week hosted by the Massachusetts Export Council, was specifically asked how new technology controls could be announced or implemented in the coming months. Chu said that’s a question “nobody knows the actual answer to,” but she noted that recent, important export control rules have been imposed by the U.S. without buy-in from allies, including new restrictions on advanced artificial intelligence chips published during the final week of the Biden administration (see 2501130026).
“I will note that the trend line is increasingly towards unilateral controls, controls that originate in the U.S. -- as opposed to out of multilateral export control regimes that we still participate in -- but controls that have extraterritorial application in third countries,” said Chu, a former senior policy adviser at the Bureau of Industry and Security. “You have this convergence of increasingly unilateral controls that increasingly seek to exercise more jurisdiction, if you will, or broader jurisdiction. I would look for more of the same.”
Chu’s National Foreign Trade Council and several other trade and technology industry associations criticized the Biden administration last month for its last-minute publication of multiple complex national security-related rules that they said appeared to “bypass standard rulemaking processes” (see 2501160061). Chu said the administration didn’t hold “open consultations” with chip and technology industry representatives before issuing the restrictions as interim final rules. “It's this lack of consultation that concerns industry,” she said.
She also said she understands Biden administration officials’ justification for skipping past the usual rulemaking process, which could have first included a proposed set of restrictions and solicited industry feedback. That strategy could have risked “telegraphing the intentions of our government” and allowed China to stockpile imports of U.S. chips before they’re controlled, Chu acknowledged. But she also noted that the latest AI diffusion export control rule was published with a 120-day delayed compliance date for certain transactions and a 365-day delay for others.
“If that's not telling China to stockpile,” she said, “then I'm not certain what is.”