House Foreign Affairs Europe Subcommittee Chairman Keith Self, R-Texas, unveiled a bill Sept. 30 to codify a new interim final rule that will place subsidiaries on the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List or Military End-User List if they are owned 50% or more by companies on those lists.

The Bureau of Industry and Security this week fined British Virgin Islands-based company Hallewell Ventures and its owner, Albert Avdolyan, $374,474 for violating sanctions against Russia. BIS said Hallewell illegally reexported a Bombardier Global 7500 jet from the Maldives to Russia without a license.

A Canada-headquartered biotechnology company agreed to pay the Bureau of Industry and Security $685,051 after admitting to illegally exporting water quality testing and analytical instruments to Iran. BIS said the company knew the shipments violated U.S. export controls, adding that it worked to “conceal” the destination of the exports by falsely listing a United Arab Emirates freight forwarder as the ultimate consignee, undervalued the items to avoid UAE customs scrutiny, and left out references to Iran in the invoice.

Processing of most export license applications, as well as sanctions licenses, will pause during the government shutdown that began Oct. 1, although export enforcement operations and national security-related investigations will continue, the Commerce, State and Treasury departments said this week.

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The Senate Banking Committee voted 13-11 along party lines Sept. 30 to approve the nomination of Christopher Pilkerton to be the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for investment security. The committee also voted 15-9 to support Jonathan Burke to be Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing. Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., joined the panel’s Republicans in backing Burke. Both nominations now head to the full Senate for its consideration.

The Bureau of Industry and Security's new 50% rule only applies to ownership, not the “control” that a parent company may have over an affiliate, the agency said in new FAQs. Other FAQs stress that the government’s Consolidated Screening List is no longer exhaustive, clarify how license exceptions may apply to unlisted affiliates, explain how BIS will determine whether a U.S. exporter has “knowledge” that a listed entity owns part of a non-listed foreign affiliate, and more.

The Bureau of Industry and Security is rolling back a Biden-era interim final rule that increased restrictions on firearms exports, the agency said in a final rule effective Sept. 30. BIS said it decided that the rule should be “rescinded in its entirety” after hearing from U.S. firearms manufacturers that the controls “would cost them hundreds of millions of dollars per year in lost sales.”

A new interim final rule released by the Bureau of Industry and Security this week introduces a 50% ownership threshold rule for the Entity List and Military End-User List, a change that’s expected to drastically increase the number of companies subject to stringent export licensing restrictions. BIS also is adopting the rule, which it calls the “Affiliates rule,” for export transactions involving certain parties sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which BIS said will “align more closely” OFAC’s 50% rule with the new restrictions under the Export Administration Regulations.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made the case last week for fewer export controls on the company’s chips, saying the U.S. government should allow Nvidia to “compete” in the Chinese market. He also avoided directly answering whether the company’s export license applications for China are being granted, despite the Trump administration announcing earlier this year that it planned to approve exports of Nvidia’s H20 chips in exchange for a cut of the sales revenue (see 2508220003).