Nearly 90 Republican lawmakers urged the Commerce Department March 5 to rescind a Biden administration interim final rule (IFR) restricting firearms exports, saying the controls hurt American businesses.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, said March 4 he’s concerned that the recent departure of key personnel at the Bureau of Industry and Security could impede the agency’s ability to prevent China from obtaining sensitive U.S. technology.
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Gerry Horner, a former Bureau of Industry and Security official who had been serving as chief of the Census Trade Regulations Branch since 2018, retired from the federal government last week, he announced on LinkedIn. At Census, Horner oversaw work to write regulations governing electronic export filings in the Automated Export System, including by working with BIS on their long-awaited routed export rule (see 2412100049 and 2403270056).
Everspin Technologies, a semiconductor firm based in Arizona, disclosed to the Bureau of Industry and Security that it may have violated U.S. export controls.
A North Carolina business owner pleaded guilty last week after trying to export accelerometer technology with military uses to China without a Bureau of Industry and Security license, DOJ said. David Bohmerwald, owner of the electronics resale business Components Cooper Inc., faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison
Sens. Jim Banks, R-Ind., and Mark Warner, D-Va., introduced a bill Feb. 26 that aims to give Congress greater insight into the export licensing process at the Bureau of Industry and Security.
The Bureau of Industry and Security for the past month has been led by a key Project 2025 contributor entrusted by the Trump administration with overseeing an export control policy review, an effort that resulted in a licensing pause and coincided with multiple senior career employees leaving the agency. BIS resumed processing and approving certain license applications around the same time the Trump official was removed from his position late last month, Export Compliance Daily has found.
Matthew Axelrod, the Bureau of Industry and Security's former export enforcement chief, has joined Gibson Dunn to help lead the firm's new sanctions and export enforcement practice group. Axelrod and former Treasury Department senior adviser Adam Smith will co-chair the new group, which they said will aim to help clients navigate rising export control and sanctions risks.
Raj Parekh, a DOJ lawyer who was named the Bureau of Industry and Security’s first chief of corporate enforcement in September (see 2409120007), is leaving BIS next week to join the law firm Sparacino, he announced on LinkedIn. Parekh said his departure from government is “entirely unrelated to current events,” adding that his one-year detail as the BIS corporate enforcement chief “would have continued if it were not for this unique opportunity in the private sector.”