BOSTON -- The Commerce Department is preparing six initial proposed rules to control exports of emerging technologies and hopes to release at least one before the end of the year, said Karen Nies-Vogel, the director of the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Office of Exporter Services, speaking during a Dec. 13 event hosted by the Massachusetts Export Center. A Commerce official said during a technical advisory committee meeting earlier this month that the agency is working on at least three rules (see 1912100019). While Commerce officials have said the technologies would be published this year (see 1910290062), delays have caused the publication to be pushed back.
BOSTON -- If the Commerce Department follows through on plans to expand the limits of the Export Administration Regulations to further control foreign shipments to Huawei, it will have a “dramatic” impact on international supply chains, said Kevin Wolf, a trade lawyer with Akin Gump and Commerce’s former assistant secretary for export administration. The measures, which Commerce confirmed it was considering earlier this month (see 1912100033), include expanding the Direct Product Rule and broadening the de minimis rule to make more foreign-made goods subject to the EAR.
The Chinese “irreversibly accelerated” their Made in China 2025 industrial program since the summer, taking a sharp protectionist turn as the U.S.-China trade war persisted with no negotiated breakthrough, Photronics CEO Peter Kirlin said on a fiscal Q4 call Dec. 11. “They ain't turning back,” said Kirlin, whose company drew more than half its Q4 revenue from the photomasks it supplied Chinese panel makers, produced at Photronics factories throughout Asia, including in Xiamen and Hefei, China.
About a year into the Trump administration's maximum pressure sanctions campaign on Iran, the effort has done nothing to bring Iran to the negotiating table, panelists said during a Dec. 12 Atlantic Council event. U.S. sanctions have instead emboldened a more aggressive Iran, panelists said, which is growing increasingly frustrated with its unwilling European trade partners and will likely continue breaching the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The European Union is proposing to amend its rules on tariff retaliation so it can still impose tariffs and other restrictions after the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement appellate body ceased to function on Dec. 11, the EU Commission said in a press release.
U.S. companies are encountering issues when trying to return faulty products to parties on the Entity List, members said during a Dec. 10 Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting. The problem occurs after companies legally import goods -- which later turn out to be defective -- from an Entity List party, the members said. The goods are not able to be easily exported for return, they said.
The Commerce Department is considering a host of expanded restrictions on foreign shipments to Huawei containing U.S. technology, said Rich Ashooh, Commerce’s assistant secretary for export administration. The agency is discussing expanding the Direct Product Rule -- which subjects certain foreign-made products containing U.S. technology to U.S. regulations -- and a broadened de minimis rule, Ashooh said during a Dec. 10 Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting. Ashooh’s comments confirmed details in a Nov. 29 Reuters report that said the U.S. was discussing ways to restrict more foreign exports to Huawei (see 1912040014).
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Dec. 2-6 in case you missed them.
The Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security's upcoming set of proposed rules on emerging technologies may not be published until early next year, another sign of the delay that has plagued the rules since Commerce first announced them more than a year ago. Commerce has three emerging technology rule proposals in “various stages of clearance,” Hillary Hess, director of the BIS Regulatory Policy Division, said during a Dec. 10 Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting. The agency hopes to publish one proposal before the end of the year, Hess said, but urged committee members to take any prediction with “at least a handful of salt.”
China hopes to reach a trade agreement with the U.S. “as soon as possible,” China said during a Dec. 9 press conference, adding that it plans to reduce import tariffs on industrial goods as part of a series of “guiding opinions” released by the State Council.