Former USTR During Obama Era Says Trump Actions on Export Controls Problematic
Former U.S. trade representative Michael Froman, at an event hosted by the centrist think tank Brookings Institution, said deciding how to apply export controls is "really difficult," and quite technical, as technologies evolve.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
"No government wants to tell a company you can't sell" to some customers, said Froman, who served during the Obama administration. "You only do it in extremis."
Froman was speaking Sept. 12, about a month after the Trump administration announced plans to allow the sale of Nvidia's H20 chip to China in exchange for the U.S. keeping a cut of the sales revenue (see 2509050036, 2508110044) and 2508130039). The Trump administration had originally agreed to remove controls over those chips as part of trade talks with China, which included Beijing loosening restrictions over its rare earths exports (see 2507150013).
"To make export controls a chip in a trade negotiation makes it much more difficult to make that hard-core decision of what’s in our national security interest -- and also to get allies to work with us," Froman said.
In response to a question from the audience, Froman said there's a lot of concern in Congress about export controls, including the administration's decision to allow sale of the H20s, and its decision to take a cut of the revenue. However, he said, he doesn't see members of Congress standing up to the president and providing a check on those moves.