The U.S. is holding off on imposing new sanctions against Russia because it believes those measures will undercut any chance of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine “for the foreseeable future,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week, despite calls from the EU and others to continue strengthening sanctions against Moscow.
Reps. Jared Golden, D-Maine, and Greg Steube, R-Fla., introduced legislation Aug. 15 that would allow the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to block entities connected to countries of concern from investing in new and existing facilities or businesses in the U.S.
Applied Materials, the largest American semiconductor equipment supplier, is expecting a drop in its China sales due to uncertainty around U.S. export controls and its high volume of pending license applications, executives said last week.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week echoed earlier comments from the White House that said the administration is open to expanding its Nvidia and AMD revenue-sharing export arrangements to other companies or industries (see 2508120049). He said the U.S. is OK negotiating export controls over Nvidia’s H20s chips because they present no national security issues.
China said it will continue to suspend retaliatory tariffs against the U.S., as well as its addition of dozens of U.S. companies to the country’s unreliable entity list, after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would be delaying reciprocal tariffs against Beijing for 90 days.
Brazil requested dispute consultations with the U.S. at the World Trade Organization on Aug. 11 regarding the 50% tariffs that President Donald Trump recently imposed on Brazilian goods. Brazil said the measures are inconsistent with U.S. obligations under Articles I and II of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994 and Articles 23.1 and 23.2 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU).
Beijing pushed back on the notion that the U.S. is considering secondary tariffs against China for purchasing Russian oil, saying it has a right to buy Russian energy.
An active-duty service member of the U.S. Army was charged with trying to send national defense information to a foreign adversary and trying to export controlled technical data, DOJ announced Aug. 6. Taylor Lee, stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, allegedly tried to send information on the M1A2 Abrams tank, an "armored fighting vehicle used by the U.S. military" and combat operations to the Russian military.
The head of a tech policy nonprofit urged the leaders of three congressional committees Aug. 7 to hold a hearing to examine the “large-scale smuggling” of advanced American AI chips into China in violation of U.S. export controls.
The Trump administration has failed to use sanctions and export controls to help end Russia’s war against Ukraine, the Democratic staffs of the Senate Banking and Foreign Relations committees said in a report released this week.