Following a package of measures meant to flush out ties between United Kingdom businesses and forced labor practices in China's Xinjiang region, compliance efforts have ramped up to ensure that supply chains are free of any association with the practice imposed on the region's Uighur Muslim population. In October 2020 and January of this year, U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced a suite of four policies meant to eliminate forced labor from supply chains (see 2101120056). The policies include business guidance to U.K. companies with links to Xinjiang; strengthening the Modern Slavery Act (MSA), that includes levying fines for non-compliance; transparency requirements for government procurement; and a review of export controls to Xinjiang.

Tariffs that the U.S. imposed on billions of dollars' worth of European imports to punish them for excessive subsidies to Airbus, and tariffs that the European Union imposed on billions of dollars' worth of U.S. exports over Boeing subsidies will be lifted for four months, the two sides said in a joint statement March 5. No date was given for the start of the temporary removal.

The Bureau of Industry and Security's January rule that expanded export restrictions on foreign military intelligence agencies (see 2102190042) and other activities of U.S. companies could lead to expansive licensing requirements and place burdensome compliance obligations on U.S. companies, Akin Gump said in a March 1 letter to BIS. The law firm said it represents a client that may be affected by the rule’s broad language and urged the agency to narrow its breadth to limit impacts on legitimate business.

The Bureau of Industry and Security issued new restrictions on exports to Myanmar and added four entities to the Entity List in response to the country’s military-led coup last month (see 2102110020). The restrictions, which take effect March 8, increase controls on certain “sensitive” items, remove certain license exceptions, impose a more strict licensing policy and subject Myanmar to BIS’s military end-use and end-user restrictions (see 2012220027), according to a final rule released March 4.

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 The commission called current U.S. export controls outdated, urged the Commerce Department to more quickly control emerging and foundational technologies, and said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. should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.

The Bureau of Industry and Security recently expanded its commodity classification request process to include the Department of Defense, which is expected to slightly increase processing times and potentially require more thorough submissions of classification requests, an agency official said. The Defense Department began participating in the process late last year as part of BIS’s implementation of the 2018 Export Control Reform Act, said John Varesi, an official in BIS’s Sensors and Aviation Division. ECRA “required that there would be an interagency effort in terms of the commodity classifications,” Varesi said during a March 2 Sensors and Instrumentation Technical Advisory Committee meeting. “This is basically the implementation of that requirement.”

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The U.S. sanctioned a host of Russian officials and agencies, will add 14 entities to the Entity List and will increase restrictions on exports of military-related goods to Russia in response to the poisoning and imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The increased export controls will also remove certain license exceptions for shipments to Russia and will impose stricter license review policies for certain sensitive goods, the State Department said March 2.

A month after the Jan. 29 imposition of export controls on vaccines in the European Union (see 2102010012), industry experts say the controls were meant only to send a message to vaccine manufacturers at risk of failing to fulfill their contracts, and that the measures have no real risk of drastically reorienting global vaccine supply chains. The controls were issued as a way to make sure British pharmaceutical company and vaccine developer AstraZeneca satisfied commitments to the EU and didn't redirect vaccine shipments to the United Kingdom, among other locations, experts said. The EU has yet to use the export authorization regime.

The State Department is expected to follow through with a rule that would permanently revise the International Traffic in Arms Regulations to allow employees involved in ITAR-related activity to work remotely. The rule, crafted under the Trump administration, was sent for interagency review in December but was withdrawn in January as part of the Biden administration's regulatory freeze on the previous administration’s pending regulations (see 2101210013).