The Bureau of Industry and Security promoted Tracy Patts to be the agency’s assistant director of the International Operations Division within the Office of Enforcement Analysis, Patts announced on LinkedIn this week. Patts has been at BIS since 2010 and mostly worked as a senior export policy analyst.
A Massachusetts financial services firm agreed to pay a nearly $7.5 million penalty after the Office of Foreign Assets Control accused its subsidiary of revising dates on invoices to skirt certain financial restrictions on dealings in new Russia-related debt. OFAC said the company’s 38 violations of the Ukraine-/Russia-Related Sanctions Regulations involved more than $1.2 million worth of invoices for companies owned by Russia’s Sberbank and VTB Bank.
The Federal Maritime Commission this week released its final rule on unreasonable carrier conduct, the last step in the FMC’s nearly two-year campaign of crafting regulations to address ocean carriers that unfairly refuse vessel or cargo space to shippers.
The Bureau of Industry and Security issued a rule last week to finalize changes to its Defense Priorities and Allocations System regulation with “minor technical amendments” from the proposed version BIS released in February. The rule, effective Aug. 21, will clarify the “existing standards and procedures” by which BIS may provide special priorities assistance, providing “transparency and differentiation between other departments’ priorities” and the Commerce Department’s jurisdiction. Other changes make “technical edits to reflect certain non-substantive updates since the DPAS regulation was last amended in 2014.”
CBP is making progress on rules to eventually mandate electronic export manifest (EEM) for air, vessel and rail cargo and is still on track to deploy a truck EEM portal later this year, the agency said ahead of the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee’s June 26 meeting. COAC also issued one recommendation related to accelerated payments for certain drawback entries.
A new rule that would impose a three-day deadline for certain responses to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. was unanimously criticized by several law firms, an industry group and the Chinese government, which said such a time frame doesn’t take into account the complex, time-consuming discussions companies must have when dealing with CFIUS. Some commenters also asked the committee to nix a proposed change that would raise the maximum penalty for violations from $250,000 per violation to $5 million, saying most violations are accidental, and the increase could rattle the “confidence” of foreign investors.
Detention and demurrage billings appear to have returned to pre-pandemic levels after spiking during the last few years, said Jason Guthrie, an official with the Federal Maritime Commission's Bureau of Trade Analysis.
EU foreign ministers and officials this week called on the bloc to better control exports of dual-use technologies, adding that they want European nations to coordinate more closely on new restrictions and hold regular meetings to discuss “key export control policy issues.” They also want the bloc to work on a new law that would allow member states to formally adopt controls agreed to at the Wassenaar Arrangement, even if they’re blocked by Russia.
Several important authorities that the Bureau of Industry and Security has under the Defense Production Act will expire in September 2025 if the DPA isn't reauthorized, a BIS official said May 8.
The Bureau of Industry and Security named Eric Longnecker, former head of the agency’s Office of Strategic Industries and Economic Security, the new deputy assistant secretary for technology security, he announced on LinkedIn. Longnecker, who has worked at BIS for nearly 20 years, announced his new role May 6.