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.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week echoed earlier comments from the White House that said the administration is open to expanding its Nvidia and AMD revenue-sharing export arrangements to other companies or industries (see 2508120049). He said the U.S. is OK negotiating export controls over Nvidia’s H20s chips because they present no national security issues.

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A U.S. cryptocurrency trading software company has reached a proposed $2.4 million settlement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control to resolve allegations that it violated U.S. sanctions, the company disclosed this week.