The State Department should scale down the International Traffic in Arms Regulations’ brokering reporting rules, which could reduce filing burdens for the defense industry and give the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls more accurate and timely information about ITAR brokering activity, industry officials said this week.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said Dec. 5 that he will seek to enhance implementation of sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act when he becomes the panel’s chairman in January.

The State Department is expecting to see a large uptick by the end of the year in the number of authorized users under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations' new AUKUS exemption, a senior agency official said.

The U.S. must continue to coordinate with allies on export controls, especially around Russia-related trade restrictions and curbs on advanced semiconductors and semiconductor tools destined to China, the Bureau of Industry and Security's Thea Kendler said during her final international outreach event as a Biden administration official.

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Companies have experienced a loss of business and other negative financial effects as a result of the Bureau of Industry and Security’s October 2022 and October 2023 rules restricting exports of advanced computing chips and chipmaking equipment (see 2310170055), the Government Accountability Office said in a new report released Dec. 2.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control fined Berlin-based Aiotec GmbH $14.55 million to settle allegations that it violated sanctions against Iran, OFAC said in a Dec. 3 enforcement notice. OFAC said the company, which sources industrial equipment for the energy sector, falsified documents and took other steps to hide that its purchase of an Australian industrial plant from a U.S. reseller would be moved to Iran.

The latest U.S. semiconductor-related export restrictions represent a strengthening of controls on China along with a “massive” expansion of foreign direct product rule restrictions, but they also include some head-scratching loopholes that chip firms will exploit, semiconductor policy researchers said this week.

A new set of U.S. export controls announced this week target a range of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, chip software tools, high-bandwidth memory and more, including by introducing new license obligations on certain foreign-made tools that the Bureau of Industry and Security said can be used by China to make advanced chips for its military. BIS also added more than 100 entities to the Entity List, most based in China, for aiding Beijing's military technology goals.

Although President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to dismantle the federal bureaucracy in Washington, a key architect of recent DOJ export control and sanctions initiatives believes those efforts will echo through the next administration.