The U.S. and the EU are continuing to prioritize export control and sanctions enforcement against Russia, said Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission’s top trade official, and he suggested the EU may soon issue penalties against companies for evading the bloc’s sanctions. He also said the two sides are working on ways they can both put in place new export controls proposed at consensus-based multilateral regimes, such as the Wassenaar Arrangement, even if they are blocked by Russia.
Exports to China
U.S. trade policy toward China should concentrate on protecting advanced technology, as opposed to completely decoupling from the Communist country, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Jan. 30.
Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who tracked the ways the U.S.-China phase one trade agreement fell short, has joined the State Department as chief economist.
The Biden administration’s proposal to impose new restrictions on U.S. investment in certain Chinese technology sectors is a complex undertaking that will be difficult to implement, a former Treasury Department official said on Jan. 30.
The U.S. and the EU held the fifth meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council in Washington on Jan. 30, where the two sides again committed to increasing trade and cooperating on economic security and emerging technology issues, according to a European Commission readout of the meeting. The commission said the EU and the U.S. agreed to “explore ways to facilitate trade in goods and technologies that are vital for the green transition” and strengthen approaches to investment screening, export controls, outbound investment and “dual-use innovation.”
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Two House committee chairs have urged the Biden administration to place export restrictions and sanctions on four “highly troubling” Chinese companies that are slated to provide software and other technology to a planned electric vehicle battery factory in the U.S.
The Commerce Department is proposing new rules that could require U.S. cloud service providers and their foreign resellers to follow know-your-customer (KYC) requirements, a step the agency said would prevent those services from being used to aid cyberattacks and to train artificial intelligence models that threaten U.S. national security. The proposed regulations are specifically aimed at preventing “foreign malicious cyber actors” from using U.S. infrastructure-as-a-service products to steal American intellectual property and sensitive data, commit espionage, and train large AI models for cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is undergoing a restructuring to separate its licensing work from its efforts to evaluate and protect emerging and foundational technologies, said Eileen Albanese, director of the Office of National Security and Technology Transfer Controls. She said the agency plans to hire at least three new senior officials to usher in the reorganization, which will help BIS meet its “broader mandate.”
The Bureau of Industry and Security is preparing to announce more “significant” export penalties and corporate resolutions this year, said Matthew Axelrod, the agency’s top export enforcement official. He also said exporters should see more export-related indictments as part of a joint effort with DOJ, and he continued to pitch a BIS funding boost, which would help it hire more export enforcement agents.