Michael Pender, a former longtime senior engineer with the Bureau of Industry and Security, is joining legal and advisory firm Fenwick as a trade analyst, he announced on LinkedIn. Pender left BIS at the end of April after first joining the agency in 2004.
The Bureau of Industry and Security has been ordered in recent months to avoid tough export controls on China as Washington tries to strike a trade deal with Beijing, the Financial Times reported July 28. The report comes after Trump administration officials said they planned to lift restrictions on Nvidia's H20 chip exports to China as part of an agreement that saw Beijing ease restrictions on rare earths (see 2507150013). The White House and BIS didn't respond to our requests for comment.
Cadence, a California-based electronic design automation firm, will pay more than $140 million in combined civil fines, criminal penalties and forfeitures to resolve allegations that it illegally exported technology to Chinese entities, DOJ and the Bureau of Industry and Security announced July 28. The company pleaded guilty to illegally exporting EDA hardware, software and semiconductor design intellectual property technology to the National University of Defense Technology, a university added to the Commerce Department's Entity List for its ties to the Chinese military, DOJ said.
The Senate July 22 approved a House-passed bill that would require an annual report to Congress on where licensed dual-use goods are being sent abroad.
The Senate Banking Committee voted 13-11 along party lines July 23 to approve David Peters' nomination as assistant secretary of commerce for export enforcement.
The State Department’s Defense Export Control and Compliance System's advisory opinions application will undergo system maintenance from 2 to 5 p.m. EDT July 25. "Industry users may experience service degradation, interruptions, or limited application functionality within DECCS during this maintenance window," the agency said. "If you experience any issues, please log back in after the maintenance window."
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The Senate Appropriations Committee’s newly released report on the FY 2026 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill (see 2507170053 and 2507100053) calls for the Bureau of Industry and Security to take several actions to inform lawmakers, including writing a report on international efforts to harmonize export controls on items that could aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
More than six months into President Donald Trump’s second term, the new administration’s plan for export controls on both semiconductors and chip manufacturing equipment remains unclear, industry officials and a congressional adviser said last week. They all said they hope any new controls are calibrated with allies.
Information collected under the Export Control Reform Act is “presumptively withheld” from Freedom of Information Act requests, the U.S. said July 14 in a case involving the disclosure of documents related to an addition to the Entity List (Husch Blackwell v. Department of Commerce, D.D.C. # 1:24-02733).