Rockley Photonics, a California photonics-based health monitoring and communications solutions company, won’t follow through with a sale to Hengtong, a Chinese power and fiber optic cable manufacturer, following Hengtong's addition to the U.S. Entity List this month. Rockley suggested the sale, which it described as a “data-communications-related technical sale,” could be subject to the Export Administration Regulations and require a Bureau of Industry and Security license.
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week released Spanish-language versions of two export compliance documents to make its materials “more accessible” to those whose primary language is Spanish. The documents are BIS’s Elementos de un ECP (Elements of an Export Compliance Program) and Directrices de Cumplimiento Para Las Exportaciones (Export Compliance Guidelines). The agency said Spanish is the second-most-frequently spoken language in the U.S. And even though a “disproportionately small number” of minority-owned businesses are exporters, “those that do export benefit more from exporting, as a percentage of receipts, when compared to nonminority-owned exporting firms,” BIS said. The agency said it hopes the translated guidance helps to “grow participation and diversity in the export economy by providing resources to help encourage more minority business enterprises to export their products.”
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The Commerce Department published its fall 2021 regulatory agenda for the Bureau of Industry and Security, including a new mention of an export control rule for crime-control items and a rule that would reorganize provisions of the foreign direct product rule in federal regulations.
The Commerce Department should immediately expand an exemption to allow U.S. companies to participate in standards-setting bodies that have members designated on the Entity List, industry representatives said. U.S. firms said they have been forced to avoid the bodies because they fear running afoul of U.S. export laws, a practice that could result in the U.S. losing important influence over the future of emerging technology standards.
The Bureau of Industry and Security added 37 entities to the Entity List, including 34 Chinese research institutes and technology companies, for supporting China’s military modernization efforts or Iran’s weapons program. Other entities added to the list, located in Georgia, Malaysia and Turkey, supplied U.S.-origin items to Iranian defense industries, BIS said.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is working on a proposed rule that would create a formal license amendment process, which could allow applicants to revise certain license information rather than start over with a replacement application, said Tim Mooney, an official in BIS’s regulatory policy division. BIS drafted a version of the proposed rule toward the end of the Obama administration, Mooney said, but the idea was nixed after some interagency disagreements about the rule’s scope.
The Bureau of Industry and Security will add 37 entities to the Entity List this week for supporting China’s military modernization efforts or Iran’s weapons program and defense industries. The entities, located in China, Georgia, Malaysia and Turkey, will be subject to a license review policy of presumption of denial for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations. No license exceptions will be available for the entities, BIS also added three additional aliases under Huawei’s Entity List entry. The additions take effect Dec. 17.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is still reviewing export controls on facial recognition software, surveillance-related products and other goods controlled for crime-control reasons after requesting feedback on the potential restrictions in July 2020, said Hillary Hess, BIS’s regulatory policy director. Although no new restrictions have been announced, Hess said new controls for items described in the rule, including crime-control goods that may be used for human rights abuses, are still being considered. “We have been looking at that,” Hess said during a Dec. 14 Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting. “It’s definitely on our plate.” In the 2020 rule, BIS solicited feedback on possibly imposing new licensing requirements for biometric systems for surveillance, non-lethal visual disruption lasers, long-range acoustic devices and other surveillance-related technologies and goods (see 2007160021). In comments, several technology companies warned BIS against imposing overly broad, unilateral export restrictions that could hurt U.S. competitiveness, while a human rights advocacy group and a U.S. lawmaker called for new export restrictions and suggested existing controls should be strengthened (see 2010090044).
Although the Bureau of Industry and Security’s new cybersecurity controls are an improvement over the restrictions proposed in 2015, the agency should still take several steps to ensure they don’t impede U.S. technology companies and inhibit information sharing in the cybersecurity sector, industry said this month. But at least one commenter said BIS should strengthen the controls by restricting a broader set of technologies and require more due diligence steps for exporters.