The U.S., the EU and others should pursue tougher enforcement on Chinese companies that continue to supply Russia’s military industrial complex and continue to buy Russian oil, panelists said during an event this week hosted by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. One said the EU should consider automatically sanctioning any Chinese company whose products are found more than once in drones, missiles or other military items used by Russia.
The U.S. should rent out AI chips to China instead of selling them, a strategy that would allow American firms to continue profiting while giving the U.S. the ability to cut off access at any time, researchers said.
The more than $140 million U.S. penalty levied on California chip firm Cadence in July (see 2507290026) is the latest signal that companies should prepare for increasingly "aggressive" export control enforcement, especially for violators of technology controls against China, law firms said. One firm said it shows that the government expects companies to provide access to business information located in China -- even if that may violate China’s anti-foreign sanctions laws -- while another firm said it highlights the challenges companies face when determining whether a customer is a front company for a party on the Entity List.
The U.S. is holding off on imposing new sanctions against Russia because it believes those measures will undercut any chance of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine “for the foreseeable future,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week, despite calls from the EU and others to continue strengthening sanctions against Moscow.
The U.K., France and Germany will support snapback sanctions against Iran if the country doesn’t agree to safeguards around its nuclear program by the end of this month, the three European nations said last week.
Applied Materials, the largest American semiconductor equipment supplier, is expecting a drop in its China sales due to uncertainty around U.S. export controls and its high volume of pending license applications, executives said last week.
The export licensing pauses and delays since the Trump administration took over in January are in conflict with the president’s stated goal of boosting American exports and opening new markets for U.S. companies, said Ron Kirk, a former U.S. trade representative.
Malaysia's July export license mandate for shipments of U.S.-origin advanced AI semiconductors could be a precursor to the U.S. carving out Malaysia from upcoming rules on advanced chip exports, a former Bureau of Industry and Security official said.
The Census Bureau is finalizing a rule that will expand the types of parties responsible for submitting export filings for in-transit shipments that are imported to the U.S. from foreign countries before being exported to another foreign destination. The agency also is adding new language to acknowledge that those parties rely on information from others to make sure the shipments comply with export controls, said it plans to eventually move forward with a new country of origin reporting requirement for in-transit exports, revised its detention for "ultimate consignee" and made other clarifications to the Foreign Trade Regulations.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week echoed earlier comments from the White House that said the administration is open to expanding its Nvidia and AMD revenue-sharing export arrangements to other companies or industries (see 2508120049). He said the U.S. is OK negotiating export controls over Nvidia’s H20s chips because they present no national security issues.