BIS Annual Budget Is ‘Pocket Change,’ Undersecretary Estevez Says

Bureau of Industry and Security Undersecretary Alan Estevez called this week for more funding from Congress, suggesting BIS may need a substantially increased annual budget to more effectively implement and enforce export controls against China and other countries.

“My budget from BIS has been essentially flat since 2010,” Estevez said during a Dec. 7 event hosted by Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. He noted that Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo last week also said the agency’s $200 million budget isn’t enough, and she compared it to the “cost of a few fighter jets” (see 2312040041).

That’s “pocket change in my defense days,” Estevez said, referring to his more than three decades as a Pentagon official before joining BIS in 2022.

He said funding for BIS needs to rise to match the increasing complexity of U.S. export control rules and the growing number of license applications the agency sees every year. “We’ve pretty much doubled in license applications” over the last decade, Estevez said, “and the complexity of our rules has doubled.” He added that the “average weight of a rule is 65% more than it was 10 years ago.”

Estevez said he BIS needs better technology, both at headquarters and in regional export enforcement offices. “I want to go out and buy a supply chain illumination tool so I can see relationships” and “who is doing what with who,” Estevez said. And although BIS does surveys of the U.S. defense industrial base, it “takes a long time,” he said, and “having a supply chain integration tool would shorten the timeline.”

“I need resources to do this job better,” Estevez said. “I want to leave BIS using 21st century tools when I leave, not early 20th century tools.”

He also would hire more export enforcement agents, specifically referencing BIS’s Los Angeles office. “They're really good people there who know what they're doing,” Estevez said, “but I want to give them tools and maybe some more shoe leather as well in order to do their jobs.”