Commerce Lacking in Resources to Make Progress on Routed Export Rule, Census Official Says

The Commerce Department’s long-awaited routed export rule continues to face delays due to a lack of agency resources and attention, said Gerry Horner, chief of the Census Bureau’s Trade Regulations Branch. Horner said both Census and the Bureau of Industry and Security currently “just don't have the resources” to make progress on the effort.

The rule, which is expected to include major changes to the process around assigning filing responsibilities to forwarders and address information sharing among parties in routed export transactions (see 2006020049), is a joint effort between Census and BIS because it affects both Census’ Federal Trade Regulation (FTR) and BIS’ Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

Horner, speaking during a trade industry conference this week in Bethesda, Maryland, hosted by trade compliance firm OCR, said he “can't go alone and do this. I have to make sure [BIS officials] Hillary Hess, Tim Mooney, Sharron Cook, Sheila Quarterman over at the Bureau of Industry and Security are sitting right there next to us working on this.” He added that the two regulatory offices also need to coordinate with BIS’ Office of Export Enforcement to “make sure the routed export transactions are enforced consistent with the way we write these regulations.”

But “with all the new changes in export controls,” Horner said, “both the Census Bureau and BIS just don't have the resources.” He called it a “massive rule,” saying it “hits on many of the sections” of the FTR and “almost rewrites” Part 758 of the EAR, which covers electronic export information filings in the Automated Export System.

Trade industry officials and lawyers have long asked the government for updates on the rule but have received little clarity. BIS officials as far back as 2020 cited “competition for resources” to explain delays in the rule (see 2012080046), and a Census official last year said the agencies hoped to prioritize the effort in the coming months after the rule had been put on hold as BIS was tasked with implementing a host of Russia-related export controls (see 2209130034).

While the delays continue, Horner said, he is trying to make progress in ways that don’t require BIS input. “My goal is that if I have the hood open in Foreign Trade Regulations, and I see something in the routed rule that I can pull over and put in the Foreign Trade Regulations, I want to do that if it doesn't impact BIS,” he said. “You may see some changes like that that are small without a full blown” rule.

Industry should continue to also ask BIS about the rule “because it is a cooperative responsibility and we need resources from both sides,” Horner said. “I go back every month to see if we have resources to complete it, and I'm hoping we will.”