Commerce Still Considering Emerging Tech Control on GAAFET, Despite Withdrawal

The Commerce Department is still considering placing export controls on Gate-All-Around Field Effect Transistor (GAAFET) technology, despite withdrawing the rule from the Office of Management and Budget last month (see 2002130033), said Hillary Hess, the Bureau of Industry and Security’s director of regulatory policy. The rule was expected to be one of six controls issued by Commerce early this year (see 1912160032) as part of the agency’s effort to control emerging technologies.

Hess said the rule is no longer being reviewed by OMB but suggested BIS could still issue an export control over the technology. “We haven’t canceled the rulemaking at this point,” Hess said during a March 10 Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting. “It’s still under consideration.” Commerce and the Trump administration have faced delays in issuing the controls, which officials expected to be released by now (see 2002040057).

BIS has issued one rule this year relating to its emerging technology effort: an interim final rule that placed controls on geospatial imagery software (see 2001030024). Hess said BIS intends to propose the control at international export control regimes, including the Wassenaar Arrangement. “We’ll be looking at that control next in a multilateral context,” Hess said.

Karen Nies-Vogel, BIS’s director of the Office of Exporter Services, said Commerce continues to consider rules that would further restrict foreign exports of goods that contain certain percentages of controlled U.S. content. Those changes -- which will be the subject of a Trump administration meeting this week, according to Reuters -- include potential changes to the de minimis rule and the Direct Product Rule (see 2002050047). “I can only say that the possibility of those rules is still being discussed within the department,” Nies-Vogel said during the meeting. “That’s as much as I can say.” She also declined to provide an update on Commerce’s advance notice of proposed rulemaking for its foundational technology effort, which was predicted by some BIS officials to be published last year (see 1907100044). “I can say that there is still internal work going on on that,” Nies-Vogel said, “and I don’t know what the timeline is.”

BIS is also working to revise more country groups under the Export Administration Regulations, Hess said. The effort will follow a February rule that amended the country groups for Russia and Yemen, increasing license restrictions for both countries (see 2002210031). The rule was the latest in an “ongoing effort” to modify and modernize Commerce country groups, which Hess said are outdated.

“There’s a significant residue of the Cold War in our country groups,” Hess said. “It's increasingly out of date.” She added that the effort will be a “long-term project” whereby BIS continually updates its country groups. “Some of it [will be] in small bites and some in larger bites,” Hess said. “This was a small bite.”