The FDA is warning U.S. exporters about a recently implemented EU law that requires all importers and producers of bee-related products, including honey, beeswax, royal jelly, propolis and pollen, to be registered in the bloc’s Trade Control and Expert System. Before registering, FDA said exporters or their suppliers “must successfully complete an on-site assessment” by USDA before sending those goods to the EU, including a USDA Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Verification Survey, Plant Survey and Food Defense System Survey. After that assessment, companies need to “apply for inclusion on the export lists via” the FDA’s Export Listing Module, and the agency said it will then verify that the applicant “maintains good regulatory standing.”
New guidance published by the EU last week outlines steps people and companies should take to make sure their dual-use goods and technology aren’t being sent to Russia, including red flags they should be monitoring as part of their compliance programs. It also offers insight into how the European Commission interprets violations of the bloc’s anti-circumvention laws, with a specific focus on minimum due diligence expectations for businesses and banks.
Chinese lidar company Hesai Technology on Dec. 9 filed a rebuke of its designation as a Chinese military company, urging the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to reverse the decision due to a host of alleged evidentiary and procedural errors. Hesai said the Pentagon, which recently relisted the company, "still cannot find a single connection to the Chinese military or defense industrial base" (Hesai Technology Co. v. U.S., D.D.C. # 24-01381).
Nearly half of U.S. companies surveyed by the Bureau of Industry and Security this year said they didn’t know whether their products contained any Chinese-made, mature-node semiconductors, BIS said in a summary of those survey results released Dec. 6.
The State Department should scale down the International Traffic in Arms Regulations’ brokering reporting rules, which could reduce filing burdens for the defense industry and give the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls more accurate and timely information about ITAR brokering activity, industry officials said this week.
The State Department is expecting to see a large uptick by the end of the year in the number of authorized users under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations' new AUKUS exemption, a senior agency official said.
U.S. and U.K. officials over the past year continued to build on a partnership between their two leading sanctions agencies, including by sharing information about national security threats and ways the agencies can modernize their approaches to licensing and enforcement, they said in a joint statement released Nov. 19.
A Venezuela-based subsidiary of Telefonica, a global telecommunications operator based in Spain, will pay over $85.2 million to settle charges that the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, DOJ announced. The U.S. alleged that Telefonica Venezolana bribed Venezuelan government officials in exchange for preferential access to U.S. dollars in a currency auction.
The U.S. government could face a host of challenges if it tries to place export controls on AI models to protect national security, the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) said in an article last week.
Turkish state-owned bank Halkbank is not shielded from "common-law foreign sovereign immunity" in the U.S. government's suit against the bank for sanctions evasion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said earlier this week, ruling that the U.S. may prosecute it on charges that it helped Iran evade U.S. sanctions (United States v. Turkiye Halk Bankasi, 2nd Cir. # 20-3499).