The Biden administration should withdraw from nuclear negotiations with Iran after DOJ charged an Iranian military official in a plot to assassinate John Bolton, a former U.S. national security adviser, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said. “The latest ‘deal’ reportedly includes significant concessions on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) probe of Iran’s past nuclear work and [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] sanctions,” McCaul said in Aug. 14 statement. “Between these dangerous proposals and the mounting evidence of Iran’s terrorist activity on U.S. soil, I urge the administration to finally withdraw from talks and shift its focus to compelling Iran to stop its malign activities.” A State Department spokesperson didn't comment. McCaul previously has urged the administration to abandon any attempts at returning to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (see 2208040012).
Congress should be taking steps to authorize more foreign military sales to Taiwan and speed up agency approvals for those exports, said Lara Crouch, a Republican staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Crouch, speaking during a Heritage Foundation event last week, said the committee will next month mark up the Taiwan Policy Act, which would include more foreign military financing for the island, authorize a war reserve stockpile for Taiwan and fast-track sales to Taiwan under the Foreign Military Sales Program.
President Joe Biden will sign the Chips and Science Act into law Aug. 9 and speak in the Rose Garden, the White House said Aug. 3. “This bill will lower the cost of everyday goods, strengthen American manufacturing and innovation, create good-paying jobs, and bolster our economic and national security,” the White House said.
Learn from the lessons of the failed Trans-Pacific Partnership, warned trade skeptics Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, in a letter they and other signatories released publicly Aug. 2. They said binding commitments in either the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or reached with Latin American partners, are not legal without congressional say-so. "The administration’s many public declarations about the proposed IPEF process seem to indicate that it plans to negotiate a binding agreement while circumventing congressional input, authority, and approval," they wrote.
A new Senate bill could impose sanctions on companies doing business with entities committing human rights abuses against Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region. The Sanctioning Supporters of Slave Labor Act, introduced this week by Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., would impose secondary sanctions on people or entities doing business or providing “support” for entities that have been sanctioned for Uyghur-related human rights abuses, the lawmakers said. They said a companion bill has been introduced in the House.
A bipartisan group of senators last week urged the Commerce Department to add China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Company to the Entity List, Reuters reported Aug. 1. In a July 28 letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, the senators, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said YMTC is an “immediate threat” to the U.S. and should be subject to strict export licensing requirements. “By failing to add YMTC to the Entity List, the U.S. Department of Commerce is allowing the PRC to exploit our technological sector and supply sanctioned parties in China,” the letter said, according to the report. A Commerce spokesperson said the agency received the letter and will respond. Spokespeople for the lawmakers didn’t immediately comment. The letter came a little more than a week after members of the Senate Banking Committee urged Bureau of Industry and Security Undersecretary Alan Estevez to add YMTC to the Entity List (see 2207150023).
Senate Finance Committee members praised the experience of Doug McKalip, the administration's nominee to be chief agricultural negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. McKalip, a senior adviser on international trade policy and other matters to the agriculture secretary, is a career staffer at USDA.
The House of Representatives passed a bill that offers tax credits and grants to semiconductor manufacturers and increases government spending on science research, on a 243-187 vote on July 28. Twenty-four Republicans voted for the bill. Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., voted present, as her family founded major chipmaker Qualcomm, which will benefit from the bill.
Trade groups that represent semiconductor manufacturers and customers lauded the Senate's passage of incentives for domestic manufacturing, while unions and a union-funded advocacy group both praised the bill and said trade provisions that were not included still need to pass.
A new Senate Bill could require the U.S. to reimpose terrorism sanctions on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and others associated with the group (see 2112020014). The bill, introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., would re-designate the FARC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, Cruz said in a July 22 emailed news release. Cruz said the Biden administration’s decision to “dismantle” the sanctions “has already created catastrophes” and removed accountability for the group. “My bill will begin to repair the damage of this decision,” Cruz said.