The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security made several changes to its Entity List, adding, removing and modifying entries for companies in China, Canada, Malaysia, Russia, The United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and more. The changes add 17 entities to the list, modify 23 existing entries for China, Hong Kong and Russia, and remove three entities located in China and the UAE, BIS said in a notice. The changes take effect Aug. 14.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for July 15-19 in case they were missed.
Commerce plans to eliminate license exceptions for civil end-users from the Export Administration Regulations, according to an alert from Akin Gump. Commerce did not say when the changes would take effect, the alert said, but U.S. companies should “prepare for the possibility that currently exempted activities may soon require specific licenses” from the Bureau of Industry and Security. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs recently completed a review of the changes, according to a notice on the OIRA website.
Commerce denied export privileges for two Iranian nationals and their company after they tried to export a $15,000 micro drill press from the U.S. to Iran, Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security said in a July 8 denied export order. Commerce also fined them $300,000 for trying to violate the Export Administration Regulations and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations.
As the Trump administration pushes for export controls on certain firearms to be transferred from the State Department to the Commerce Department, top Commerce officials said the move should not be a cause for concern and said they are welcoming feedback from the public and members of Congress.
Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security and the Census Bureau plan to issue a proposed rule for routed export transactions during the summer or fall of 2019, said Sharron Cook, a senior export policy analyst with BIS, at BIS’s annual export controls conference on July 10. The long-awaited proposed rule is expected to update parties’ responsibilities under the Export Administration Regulations in a routed export transaction.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for June 24-28 in case they were missed.
The Commerce Department will approve more temporary licenses to U.S. exporters selling “general merchandise” to Huawei, U.S. National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said on CBS and Fox News on June 30, potentially providing relief to both U.S. firms and China’s telecommunications tech giant. Although specific details have not yet been released, Commerce plans to grant export licenses for products that China can easily get from other countries, including “various chips and software,” Kudlow said.
A California man was recently arrested for illegally exporting cesium atomic clocks to Hong Kong without obtaining the required Bureau of Industry and Security License, the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a June 27 press release. Alex Yun Cheong Yue allegedly bought the clock from a U.S. reseller by misrepresenting its end-use, and was attempting to buy another clock when the reseller requested to tour Yue’s non-existent California facility to verify the end-use, causing Yue to abort his plans to export a second clock.
There is significant tension and disagreement between the Defense and Commerce departments about the reach of U.S. export controls, said Jamie McCormick, a staffer for House Appropriations Committee Republicans, June 27 at the American Association of Exporters and Importers Annual Conference in Washington. McCormick said the confusion surrounding foundational technologies among U.S. industry leaders may stem from the original passage of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, adding that he believes the executive branch does not agree on a definition for foundational technologies. “I’m not certain that at the time they passed the bill that the executive branch could say with any certainty what they meant by foundational technologies,” McCormick said.