Days after President Joe Biden said the U.S. may investigate billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter for national security reasons, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she sees “no basis” for doing so, CBS reported Nov. 15. Yellen told CBS that she wasn’t “sure precisely what [the president] had in mind, but we are -- we have really no basis -- to the best of my knowledge -- to examine his finances of his company. I'm not aware of concerns that would cause us” to investigate. Yellen’s comments came less than a month after Bloomberg reported that the administration was weighing whether it should subject the deal to a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (see 2210210018).
The U.S.’s best option to address potential national security risks arising from TikTok is through a foreign investment review rather than an outright ban, said James Lewis, a technology policy expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
FedEx is furloughing workers in its freight unit in various U.S. markets due to a cargo slowdown, the company said in an emailed statement, Bloomberg reported Nov. 14. The workers will continue to receive health benefits, and some will be offered transfers to company areas that are still hiring. The announcement follows FedEx's move to cut cargo flights and park planes given the decline in the air-freight market, Bloomberg said. “The company will continue to evaluate the environment and bring back furloughed employees as business circumstances allow,” the statement said, though it did not mention the number of affected employees.
President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet in-person in Indonesia Nov. 14 to “discuss a range of regional and global issues,” the White House announced last week. The meeting will take place about a month after the U.S. announced new export licensing requirements designed to restrict China’s ability to acquire advanced computing chips and manufacture advanced semiconductors (see 2210070049).
The State Department approved potential military sales to Lithuania and Oman, worth about $880 million combined, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Nov. 9.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls published the presentation slides from its Nov. 9 Defense Trade Advisory Group meeting. The slides include presentations from DTAG working groups on Part 130 reporting and joint ventures.
The State Department approved a potential military sale to Belgium worth about $380 million, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Nov. 8. The sale is for “AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles” and related equipment. The principal contractor will be Raytheon Missile Systems.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is seeking public comments on an information collection related to “miscellaneous licensing responsibilities and enforcement.” The collection involves various activities that “do not involve submission of documents to the BIS but instead involve exchange of documents among parties in the export transaction to ensure that each party understands its obligations under U.S. law,” the agency said in a notice released this week. Other activities involve writing export control statements on shipping documents or reporting “unforeseen changes in shipping and disposition of exported commodities.” The activities are needed by the Office of Export Enforcement and CBP to document exports and enforce the Export Administration Regulations. Comments are due Jan. 9.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls said Nov. 7 it was running into a “delay generating customer service cases from the DDTCCustomerService@state.gov email” and Defense Export Control and Compliance System tickets. DDTC said it has since resolved the problem. Questions can be directed to the Help Desk at 202-663-2838 and the Response Team at 202-663-1282.
The U.S. and the EU agreed to continue building on U.S. liquid natural gas exports to Europe and hope to supply an additional 50 billion cubic meters in 2023 compared with 2021, according to a joint statement released Nov. 7. The U.S. exported about 48 BCM to the EU from January through October, the statement said, 26 BCM more than in all of 2021. “Building on this trend, the participants committed to work on keeping a high level of LNG supplies to Europe in 2023.” The U.S. and the EU earlier this year announced an initiative to reduce European dependency on Russian energy in a bid to further isolate Moscow amid its war in Ukraine (see 2203250035).