Republicans last week urged the Biden administration against meeting with Beijing to discuss semiconductor export controls, saying the U.S. should not negotiate its policies with China and should instead enact tougher restrictions. They specifically asked Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who is considering a trip to China, to pledge that the U.S. plans to increase its export restrictions against the country.
BIS Entity List
The Entity List is a BIS trade restriction list consisting of entities deemed a national security concern and therefore subject to license requirements for exporting specified items, such as some U.S. technologies. Inclusion on the Entity List is more severe than being placed on the Unverified List.
The Bureau of Industry and Security has seen a recent spike in completed end-use checks in China after years of dormancy, which has allowed the agency to verify controlled items went to their intended destination, said Matthew Axelrod, top export enforcement official at BIS. Axelrod, speaking during a Senate Banking Committee hearing this week, said the agency has completed more than 90 checks in the last seven months, a stark turnaround from a government in China that hadn’t “scheduled a single end-use check for us in over two years.”
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week extended its public comment periods for two recent information collections. BIS initially requested comments on each in November and is now extending the comment periods for 30 days. One information collection involves the procedure for entities on the Unverified List or Entity List to request removal or “modification” of their placement on either list (see 2211230010), and the other is related to voluntary disclosures for violations of the Export Administration Regulations (see 2211170010).
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week added 32 parties to its Unverified List after it was unable to verify their “legitimacy and reliability” for receiving export-controlled items. The additions include 14 entries in China, five in the United Arab Emirates, four in Turkey, two in Germany and one each in Bulgaria, Canada, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Singapore.
The Biden administration should be doing more to harmonize its export controls and sanctions lists to more effectively penalize foreign companies that should be subject to strict trade restrictions, lawmakers said this week. Several Republicans suggested they plan to pursue legislation to mandate that the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List be aligned with sanctions lists maintained by the Treasury Department, and at least one lawmaker said BIS should already have taken steps to formally do so.
The Commerce Department published its fall 2022 regulatory agenda for the Bureau of Industry and Security, including one new rule that will finalize new chip export controls against China and others that could revise chemical weapons reporting requirements, the Export Administration Regulations and the Entity List.
The Bureau of Industry and Security added a host of Chinese and Russian entities to the Entity List, including top Chinese chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. and leading Chinese artificial intelligence firms, the agency said in a pair of notices released Dec. 15. The new restrictions on the Chinese firms are aimed at “severely restricting” China’s ability to leverage AI, advanced computing and other commercial technologies for its military or human rights abuses, BIS Undersecretary Alan Estevez said. The agency added the Russian entities to the list after it was unable to complete end-use checks. The changes took effect Dec. 16.
The Bureau of Industry and Security will add a host of Chinese and Russian entities to the Entity List, including top Chinese chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., the agency said in a pair of notices released Dec. 15.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security is preparing to add China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. and 35 other Chinese companies to its Entity List as early as this week, Bloomberg reported Dec. 13. YMTC and other companies have been at risk of being added to the Entity List since being placed on the BIS Unverified List in October. Under a new policy, BIS can transfer entities from the UVL to the more restrictive Entity List if they don’t cooperate with a U.S. end-use check within 60 days (see 2210070006). A BIS spokesperson didn’t comment.
China has been more receptive to U.S. end-use checks on Chinese entities as a result of a Commerce Department policy change from October, Bureau of Industry and Security Undersecretary Alan Estevez said this week. Estevez also said he doesn’t expect any significant revisions to BIS’s most recent chip restrictions on China, and warned that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would spark new, strict U.S. export controls that would cause U.S. companies to lose “billions” of dollars in Chinese business.