Many opportunities exist to increase the effectiveness of U.S. financial sanctions, researchers said during a Feb. 20 hearing of the congressionally mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Any potential U.S.-Russia agreement to end the war in Ukraine will likely take at least a year to come to fruition, researchers and policy experts said, although some U.S. sanctions could be lifted in the meantime.

The U.S. has so far declined to tell the EU how it chose the 18 countries that will benefit from mostly unrestricted access to advanced artificial intelligence chips under the Bureau of Industry and Security’s AI diffusion rule, the European Commission’s chief trade enforcement officer said this week, making it “very difficult” for EU officials to negotiate lifting the restrictions.

The Bureau of Industry and Security is facing a backlog of export license applications and a barrage of questions from industry after applications were put on hold earlier this month, although the agency hopes to see processing slowly return to normal as political appointees are put in place, Export Compliance Daily has learned.

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Companies in the Czech Republic plan to ask the Bureau of Industry and Security to loosen restrictions on U.S. exports of advanced artificial intelligence chips that were put in place as part of a BIS rule in January that tightened controls for nations around the world.

The State Department needs a better system to review export license applications for firearms, and the Bureau of Industry and Security needs to address employee shortages that are hindering its end-use checks for those exports, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.

Although the new administration appears to be gearing up to build on U.S. outbound investment restrictions against China, President Donald Trump’s affinity toward dealmaking means that tighter rules aren’t a guarantee, an analyst said. Other analysts said the U.S. will face challenges trying to convince its allies in Asia, including Japan and South Korea, to also impose restrictions on outbound deals in China.

The Bureau of Industry and Security has paused reviews of new export license applications submitted this month, without explanation, causing concern and frustration among exporters and trade compliance officials.

The U.S. needs to expand its export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment to focus on "foundational" chips and not just advanced ones, policy analyst Dmitri Alperovitch said.