Despite co-sponsoring a bill that would impose a wide range of sanctions on Russia and its supporters if Moscow refuses to reach a peace deal with Ukraine, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said Aug. 19 he is hesitant for Congress to take up the legislation when it returns from its August recess.
The U.S. should rent out AI chips to China instead of selling them, a strategy that would allow American firms to continue profiting while giving the U.S. the ability to cut off access at any time, researchers said.
The more than $140 million U.S. penalty levied on California chip firm Cadence in July (see 2507290026) is the latest signal that companies should prepare for increasingly "aggressive" export control enforcement, especially for violators of technology controls against China, law firms said. One firm said it shows that the government expects companies to provide access to business information located in China -- even if that may violate China’s anti-foreign sanctions laws -- while another firm said it highlights the challenges companies face when determining whether a customer is a front company for a party on the Entity List.
The State Department announced three-year debarments this week against 16 people convicted of violating U.S. export control laws. All 16 are “generally ineligible” to participate in activity controlled by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations for three years following their dates of conviction. At the end of that period, they must apply to be reinstated from their debarment before engaging in ITAR activities.
The future effectiveness of U.S. export controls will depend on which technologies the government targets, how it collaborates with allies, and how well the U.S. is able to resource the Bureau of Industry and Security, said Navin Girishankar and Matt Borman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Citing national security and legal concerns, seven Democratic lawmakers called on the Trump administration Aug. 15 to reverse its decision to allow Nvidia and AMD to sell certain controlled computing chips to China in exchange for a portion of their sales revenue.
President Donald Trump signed a new executive order Aug. 13 aimed at deregulating the commercial space sector, which it said will help make American space launch companies more competitive. The order doesn't explicitly mention the loosening of export or trade restrictions, but it directs the Commerce and Transportation departments, along with other government offices, to create a "streamlined process for authorizing novel space activities (missions not clearly or straightforwardly governed by existing regulatory frameworks) with the goal of enabling American space competitiveness and superiority in new space-based industries."
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., called on the Bureau of Industry and Security Aug. 14 to return China’s Institute of Forensic Science to the BIS Entity List, citing the lab’s "continual and well-documented" human rights abuses.
The export licensing pauses and delays since the Trump administration took over in January are in conflict with the president’s stated goal of boosting American exports and opening new markets for U.S. companies, said Ron Kirk, a former U.S. trade representative.
While the U.S. government is going to “great lengths” to ease broad-based sanctions on Syria to allow normal business ties with the war-torn country to resume, sanctions on specific individuals and entities in Syria will probably remain in place for years to come to ensure bad actors can't access their frozen assets, according to a former Treasury Department official.