The White House should hold off on issuing a “unilateral” executive order on outbound investment screening (see 2209290043 and 2209140041) and should instead work with Congress to address sensitive investment flows to China, said Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee. In an Oct. 3 letter to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, McHenry said he is “concerned that the Administration may choose to resort to unilateral measures,” including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, rather than “work with Congress to address the threat posed by China.”
Nova Daly, a Wiley senior public policy adviser, said businesses in sensitive sectors should prepare for outbound investment review, because even if Congress does not legislate on the topic, the House speaker and Senate majority leader asked the White House to issue an executive order creating such a review.
The Senate Agriculture Committee this week advanced the nomination of Alexis Taylor, President Joe Biden's nominee to be USDA’s undersecretary for trade and foreign agricultural affairs, to the full Senate (see 2205160011). During her nomination hearing, Taylor said she expects U.S. agricultural traders to have “huge opportunities” in the Indo-Pacific. She said they should prepare for expanded market access (see 2209230028).
The Commerce Department should do more to restrict exports of assault rifles, which have increased since their export licensing oversight was transferred from the State Department in 2020, four Democratic lawmakers said in a Sept. 28 letter to Secretary Gina Raimondo. The lawmakers asked Commerce to outline its processes for preventing weapons from being exported to human rights abusers, explain its end-user verification process, and provide statistics on its export license approvals and denials for assault weapons.
Two lawmakers are asking President Joe Biden to determine whether Russia’s imprisonment of opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza constitutes a human rights violation and should be met with sanctions. In a letter to Biden last week, Sens. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said Kara-Murza’s “history of defending and promoting human rights” and his opposition to the war in Ukraine may have led to assassination attempts against him in 2015 and 2017 and to his “current wrongful imprisonment.”
A new, bipartisan bill in the Senate and House would introduce new sanctions measures to “hold the Russian Federation accountable for the countless human rights abuses” in Ukraine. The bill -- introduced by in the Senate by Todd Young, R-Ind., and Jacky Rosen D-Nev., and in the House by Pat Fallon, R-Texas, and Jimmy Panetta D-Calif. -- would create a “congressional nomination process” for new human rights sanctions under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. It would also “update” U.S. policy to “address” people involved in Russia’s forced relocation and retention activities in Ukraine, and it would require the State Department to include details on human rights abuses in Ukraine in its annual human rights report. It would also require the administration to submit a classified report to Congress on the scope of Russia’s war crimes, including abuses to human rights.
U.S. agricultural exporters have “huge opportunities” in the Indo-Pacific and should prepare for expanded market access soon, said Alexis Taylor, President Joe Biden’s nominee for the USDA’s Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs undersecretary (see 2205160011). Taylor, speaking during a nomination hearing last week, said she hopes to work closely with other agencies on “trade parties” within the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (see 2209190077) if she is confirmed.
Republicans in the Senate and House last week introduced a bill that would prevent the U.S. from reentering the Iranian nuclear deal until it can certify that Iran hasn’t planned assassination attempts on Americans for five years. The legislation would specifically require the U.S. to continue imposing sanctions against Iran, and prevent the U.S. from issuing any sanctions waivers, until the “Government of Iran ceases to attempt to assassinate United States officials, other United States citizens, and Iranian nationals residing in the United States.” A lawmaker previously called on the Biden administration to withdraw from negotiations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action after DOJ charged an Iranian military official in a plot to assassinate former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton (see 2208150049).
The director of national intelligence should study how a potential “supplier partnership arrangement” between China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. and Apple would affect U.S. national security, four senators said in a Sept. 21 bipartisan letter to DNI Avril Haines. The study should assess how China supports YMTC as part of a plan to advance its domestic semiconductor industry, how YMTC potentially helps Chinese firms evade U.S. sanctions and YMTC’s role in China’s civil-military fusion program.
The Senate on Sept. 22 voted to ratify the Kigali Amendment to the international Montreal Protocol, which lawmakers say will not only slow climate change but help U.S. exporters. The amendment calls on countries to reduce the production and use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that stem from air conditioning and refrigeration appliances, which damage the environment.