President Donald Trump signed into law Aug. 19 a bill that will require an annual report to Congress on certain dual-use license applications, the White House announced.

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.

Citing national security and legal concerns, seven Democratic lawmakers called on the Trump administration Aug. 15 to reverse its decision to allow Nvidia and AMD to sell certain controlled computing chips to China in exchange for a portion of their sales revenue.

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.

While the U.S. government is going to “great lengths” to ease broad-based sanctions on Syria to allow normal business ties with the war-torn country to resume, sanctions on specific individuals and entities in Syria will probably remain in place for years to come to ensure bad actors can't access their frozen assets, according to a former Treasury Department official.

The Republican-led House Select Committee on China said Aug. 14 that a new trade agreement the Trump administration is negotiating with China should contain or exclude certain provisions to protect U.S. economic and national security.

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.