Commerce Issues Export Controls on Certain Cultivation Chambers, Chemicals

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security announced a new set of export controls on certain cultivation chambers and chemicals (see 2005150048). The controls, agreed to by the Australia Group during a February meeting, restrict the sales of certain “rigid-walled, single-use” cultivation chambers and precursor chemicals, along with the “Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus,” or MERS. The final rule, which takes effect June 17, falls under BIS's effort to restrict sales of emerging technologies (see 2005190052), as mandated by the 2018 Export Control Reform Act, the agency said.

The final rule amends several Export Control Classification Numbers on the Commerce Control List. BIS amended ECCN 1C350 by adding 24 new precursor chemicals to the CCL, including any mixtures in which 30% or more of its weight is composed of one of the newly controlled chemicals. The agency amended ECCN 1C351 to add export controls on the MERS virus and amended ECCN 2B352 by adding a technical note to indicate that controlled cultivation chambers now include single-use chambers with rigid walls. BIS said these items were not previously listed on the CCL or controlled multilaterally, but will be controlled by other Australia Group members.

BIS said it had identified the chemicals and the cultivation chambers as candidates for export controls before they were adopted by the Australia Group. Without export controls, the chemicals were “exploited for chemical weapons purposes,” BIS said. In addition, the chambers recently “gained significant market share in the single-use biological equipment market,” BIS said, and were susceptible to use for chemical and biological weapons purposes. BIS specifically pointed to two chambers that drew its concern: “impeller-mixed liquid culture chambers” and “novel packed-bed and hollow-fiber models.”

BIS said it added export controls to the MERS virus because of its “potential use in biological weapons activities.” The notice contains a list of the newly controlled chemicals and a table with a revised alphabetical listing of chemicals under ECCN 1C350.d that reflects the changes.

All exports that now require a license as a result of this rule that were aboard a carrier to a port as of June 17 may continue to their destinations under the previous eligibility as long as they are exported, reexported or transferred before Aug. 17. Deemed exports of technology and source code that now require a license as a result of this rule “may continue to be made” under the previous eligibility before Aug. 17, BIS added. At midnight on Aug. 17, that technology and source code may no longer be released without a license “to a foreign national subject to the ‘deemed’ export controls in the [Export Administration Regulations]” when a license would normally be required to “the home country of the foreign national,” the agency said.

The rule also made a conforming change to update an ECCN reference to hydrogen fluoride in the “eligible item descriptions” for two end-users: Samsung China Semiconductor Co. Ltd. and Shanghai Huahong Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. BIS clarified that the conforming change does not change the scope of eligible items for either of the two end-users -- it only updates ECCN references to “correctly identify which … items are eligible for each of these validated end-users.”

(Federal Register 06/17/20)