U.S.-based technology company Oracle this month updated its export control licensing guidance for its software products. The guidance features an Export Control Classification Number matrix, which lists the ECCN for various Oracle products and whether they require a license or are eligible for certain export license exceptions. The company updated a similar guidance for its hardware products earlier this year.
The U.S.’s recently announced export controls on four technologies that can be used to produce advanced semiconductors and gas turbine engines (see 2208120038) are a “violation” of international trade rules, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce said this week. The controls -- which will impose license restrictions on two substrates of ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors, certain Electronic Computer Aided Design software and certain pressure gain combustion technology -- “will inevitably hinder international scientific and technological exchanges” and “threaten the security and stability of global industrial and supply chains,” the spokesperson said, according to an unofficial translation of an Aug. 18 news conference transcript. “The United States continues to generalize the concept of national security and abuses export control measures,” the spokesperson said.
The U.K. recently released a report on strategic export controls developments during 2021, detailing its export licensing data, efforts to conduct industry outreach, and information on compliance, enforcement, case studies and more. The U.K. said it processed about 16,400 individual export licenses during 2021 -- rejecting 245 of them -- and completed 69% of them within 20 working days, an increase from the 62% it completed during the same time frame in 2020 but a decrease from the 77% it completed in 2019. It also said it “continues to operate one of the most transparent licensing regimes in the world, publishing information on all licenses issued, refused or revoked.”
Even though U.S. export controls haven’t cut into SMIC’s profit margins, they have hurt the Chinese semiconductor company’s ability to advance its chip-producing technology, said Min-Hua Chiang, a Heritage Foundation research fellow. Because restrictions imposed by the Bureau of Industry and Security limit SMIC’s ability to import equipment for making chips below 10 nanometers, the company is “stuck with using older technology,” she wrote in an August post. “Without access to foreign equipment,” the post said, “it will be very difficult for China to produce the most advanced chips any time soon, putting a severe crimp in Beijing’s plans for its military and security apparatus.”
The University of Pennsylvania recently issued an updated version of its export control compliance manual. The new document, released last month, includes an overview of export and sanctions regulations and an outline of Penn’s export control procedures, including information on its technology control plan process, its export control analyses, its recordkeeping procedures and more.
At least 450 kinds of foreign-made parts and components have been found in Russian military equipment captured in Ukraine since Moscow’s invasion earlier this year, the Royal United Services Institute said in a report this week. The majority of those components were manufactured in the U.S., the think tank said, and at least 80 “different kinds of components” are subject to U.S. export controls.
The State Department on Aug. 3 sent a proposed rule for interagency review that would expand the definition of activities that are not exports, reexports, retransfers or temporary imports. The rule will propose to add “two additional activities” to the definition in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, the agency said. The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls in 2019 issued an interim final rule that provided definitions for those activities (see 1912230052) and later published guidance (see 2002210019).
The Bureau of Industry and Security on Aug. 4 sent a final rule for interagency review that would implement certain export control decisions made during the 2021 Wassenaar Arrangement cycle. The rule will revise the Commerce Control List and corresponding parts of the Export Administration Regulations, including License Exception Adjusted Peak Performance, BIS said. The agency recently completed review of a separate rule involving new export control decisions for emerging technologies agreed to at the 2021 Wassenaar plenary (see 2208030007).
President Joe Biden last week extended a national emergency that authorizes certain export control regulations, the White House said. Biden renewed the emergency for one year beyond Aug. 17.
The Bureau of Industry and Security completed an interagency review of an interim final rule involving new export control decisions for emerging technologies agreed to at the 2021 Wassenaar Arrangement plenary. The rule, which was first sent for interagency review March 8 (see 2203090009), was completed Aug. 2. It will harmonize the Commerce Control List with a portion of Wassenaar’s 2021 decisions for certain “recently developed or developing technologies,” BIS said.