Updated as of March 9, 2022
Key Takeaways of OFAC (Treasury), BIS (Commerce), and State Actions
- Major Russian Banks Blocked from the U.S. Financial System
U.S., UK and EU Sanctions Over the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Regions of Ukraine
Updated as of February 25, 2022
Key Takeaways
- On February 21, 2022, the White House issued a new Executive Order (EO) that imposes comprehensive sanctions
Verify, Then Trust: Commerce Adds 33 Parties in China to Unverified List
- BIS added 33 Chinese companies to the Unverified List.
- The UVL places lesser restrictions designees than an Entity List or Sanctions designation
- BIS may not have been able to verify the entities because of new Chinese laws restricting compliance with extraterritorial laws; creating a potential conflict of laws for these and other companies.
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Lend Me Your EARs: CFIUS Makes Export Controls a Trigger for Mandatory Filings
On October 15, 2020, CFIUS will officially tie mandatory filings to U.S. export control regimes, including the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). While that change may draw a clearer line of what constitutes a mandatory filing, it also pulls your CFIUS review into the complex (and somewhat nerdy) world of export regulations.
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Chasing Huawei: BIS May Change the Rules of the Game to Target One Player
The U.S. Department of Commerce is considering tightening export controls in two major ways. The changes are aimed at choking off supplies to Huawei, but
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A Chinese Export License to Get a Smart Phone? Tech-Tonic Changes in World Export Controls
“A free and open economy is the foundation of global peace and prosperity.”
– Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, G20 summit, June 2019.
On July 1, 2019, only few days after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe opened the G20 summit with a speech endorsing an open global economy, the Japanese government announced that it will impose tighter controls on technology-related exports from Japan to South Korea for reasons of national security. The controls may have a devastating effect on trade between the two countries and will create further drag on the world economy.
Continue Reading A Chinese Export License to Get a Smart Phone? Tech-Tonic Changes in World Export Controls
Hua-Wait a Minute: Entity Designation Affects Non-U.S. Manufacturers’ Exports to China Tech Giant
On May 16, 2019, a sweeping U.S. export control rule went into effect that will impact the U.S. tech industry, but may also create an outsized risk for non-U.S. manufacturers. The rule, issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) adds Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei) and 68 of its affiliates to the Entity List. That designation effectively prohibits the export, reexport, and retransfer of all U.S.-origin “items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR)” to those entities. The designation arises from a U.S. government finding that the restrictions are warranted on U.S. national security and foreign policy grounds.
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The Little Regulation That Will Make a Big Change in How You Do Business: Department of Commerce to Establish New Export Controls on Emerging Technologies
Key Takeaways:
- Emerging technology sectors will soon be subject to new export controls.
- Affected sectors include biotech, computing, artificial intelligence, positioning and navigation, data analytics, additive manufacturing, robotics, brain-machine interface, advanced materials, and surveillance.
- New export controls on these sectors will likely require companies to obtain a license to export products to China and other destinations, and impose restrictions on sharing information with foreign nationals.
- These sectors will also be added the list of industries subject to enhanced foreign investment scrutiny by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
- The U.S. government has invited comments on the criteria to be used to establish new controls. The deadline for comments is December 19, 2018.
Export controls and other regulations often lag a step or two behind the times. That trend has accelerated with the pace of technological advancement. As a result, for many years, technical know-how in many cutting-edge technical fields has not been subject to export controls. This has meant that many commercial technical innovations could be freely exported without significant restrictions. As long as they were not designed for a military application, and no encryption technology involved, many new ideas developed in the United States were simply unaccounted for in the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR).
But the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is about to make up a lot of ground in a single, large leap.
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Military Electronics Export Reform: Let the Chips Fall Where They May
Every time there is a new round of reforms under the President’s Export Control Reform initiative, we hear the same advice:
- Controls on certain items are eliminated or reduced (which creates new opportunities for manufacturers and exporters); but
- The new rules bring new complexities, so be careful.
Attorneys in the export control space correspondingly inundate us with articles advising, in effect, call your export control lawyer.
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Drop Your Weapons: The United States Restricts Military Exports to Venezuela
The U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has amended the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to restrict exports to Venezuela of certain items intended for “a military end use or end user.” These changes complement a pre-existing U.S. arms embargo against Venezuela – in place since 2006 – that was imposed because of Venezuela’s failure to cooperate on counterterrorism initiatives.
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ECR Episode XI: Rewriting the Guide to the Galaxy – Satellites Passed to Commerce Control
Glancing through the fictional but fascinating Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Rsch. Ford Prefect; Pub. Megadodo Publications), one might recognize that the assertions therein are a bit confusing. Similarly, one might become confused when reviewing another, less whimsical, guide to the galaxy: the revised United States Munitions List Category XV – Spacecraft and Related Articles.
On November 10, 2014 Export Control Reform revisions will go into effect reshaping the USML category that has covered communications satellites for nearly 20 years. If you are responsible for complying with satellite export controls, we offer the same profound and pithy advice one finds right on the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, “Don’t Panic.”