Simon Courtman, a former commodity jurisdiction analyst with the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, has joined General Dynamics as an international trade and compliance manager, he announced on LinkedIn this week. Courtman left DDTC in 2020 and has since worked as a compliance official for several companies, including KPMG and ST Engineering.
Although export control reforms by the U.S., Australia and the U.K. could exempt about three-quarters of defense trade between the countries and reduce compliance costs for industry, more updates are needed to remove lingering licensing barriers and address structural challenges posed by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, researchers said this week.
Marissa Cloutier, chief of the compliance and civil enforcement division of the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, is starting a temporary assignment with the Air Force, she announced on LinkedIn. Cloutier said she will work as an Air Force country director for foreign military sales for six months.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls last week released its notifications to Congress of recently proposed export licenses. The notifications cover licenses submitted from October to December and January through March, and include exports to Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, Israel, Canada, the U.K., Ukraine, Norway, Germany, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
A new rule issued by the State Department last week will finalize an exemption for defense trade between the U.S., Australia and the U.K., potentially removing export control barriers for a range of items that had previously faced strict license requirements under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Australia and the U.K. said the exemption and other AUKUS changes are expected to lift restrictions on billions of dollars worth of exports each year and eliminate hundreds of export licenses once the “license free” trade begins next month.
The State Department this week published a final version of a rule to expand its regulatory definition of activities that don’t need a license because they don’t qualify as exports, reexports, retransfers or temporary imports. The rule, effective Sept. 16, is largely consistent with the proposed version, though the agency made changes to narrow its scope and make sure certain temporary imports will still require a license.
The State Department is seeking public comments on four information collections from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, the agency said in a notice this week. The collections deal with export licenses for unclassified defense articles and related unclassified technical data; license applications for temporary imports of unclassified defense articles; applications for temporary export of unclassified defense articles; and applications to amend those export or temporary import licenses.
A new set of export controls on U.S. persons activities and other transactions could require “dramatic expansions” to some companies’ internal compliance programs, Akin Gump said this month, including additional compliance training, end-user certifications and greater due diligence of suppliers and customers.
The State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls this week announced its roster of members for the 2024-2026 term of the Defense Trade Advisory Group. The DTAG, which offers recommendations to DDTC about defense export control issues, recently suggested improvements to the government's foreign military sales program (see 2310130032).
Parts of the expert testimony submitted by the U.S. in a criminal export control case should be excluded from the trial because the experts relied on State Department commodity-jurisdiction determinations prepared outside the court, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky said July 31. The court said the defendants didn't have a chance to cross-examine the State Department officials who prepared the determinations because they didn't offer testimony during trial.