The State Department is maintaining the status of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba as a foreign terrorist organization and is adding several aliases to both its FTO designation and its Specially Designated Global Terrorist designation, the agency said in notices released this week. The new aliases are: The Resistance Front, TRF, Kashmir Resistance Front and Kashmir Resistance. The designations subject the group to strict sanctions, financial reporting requirements and other restrictions.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned six key leaders and affiliates of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuela-based criminal group that the U.S. labeled a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and Foreign Terrorist Organization in February (see 2502200019 and 2502200019). The designations target Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, also known as Nino Guerrero, the head of Tren de Aragua, along with co-founder Yohan Jose Romero and senior officials Josue Angel Santana Pena, Wilmer Jose Perez Castillo and Felix Anner Castillo Rondon. OFAC also sanctioned Guerrero Flores' wife, Wendy Marbelys Rios Gomez, for her ties to money laundering, terrorism and terrorist financing, the agency said, adding that it believes she has "enriched herself through profits" from Tren de Aragua.
A bill to mandate location-tracking mechanisms for exports of advanced chips was panned this week by technology policy experts who said the requirement would be tricky to implement and could push foreign customers to stop trusting American-made semiconductors. They also said Congress should be more focused on boosting the Bureau of Industry and Security budget to help the agency step up enforcement.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls this week released its notifications to Congress of recently proposed export licenses. The notifications, which cover licenses submitted from January through March, include exports to Germany, Ukraine, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.K., Denmark, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Congress should ask the Trump administration several key questions as part of its oversight of the Treasury Department’s new program restricting outbound investment, two investment security experts told the House Financial Services national security subcommittee July 16.
The Council of the European Union on July 15 sanctioned Russian individuals and entities for committing human rights abuses and engaging in destabilizing actions abroad through foreign information manipulation.
India's Directorate General of Foreign Trade this week issued new guidelines for how companies should develop and operate export control compliance programs for dual-use goods. The guidance states that companies must have export compliance programs in order to be eligible for certain export licenses, including India's "Global Authorisation for Inter-Company Transfers" scheme, which issues licenses for exports to company affiliates in certain third countries, and the country's "Open General Export License" scheme, which issues one-time export licenses for a specific time period.
Nearly half of respondents to a US-China Business Council survey reported losing sales to international competitors due to U.S. export controls, which is almost 20% more than last year, the council said in summary of those survey results this week. It said 56% of companies reported losing sales to Chinese competitors and that, in total, "nearly 60% of companies affected by export controls saw declines in market share last year."
The Trump administration’s decision to approve exports of advanced Nvidia chips to China could backfire on the U.S. the next time it tries to convince allies to restrict their advanced technology shipments to China, Divyansh Kaushik of Beacon Global Strategies said.
The Council of the European Union on July 15 added people and entities to its Iran, Haiti and Moldova sanctions list and renewed the Haiti sanctions regime for another year.