State Dept. Regulatory Agenda Includes New Mentions of ITAR Changes

The State Department published its fall 2020 regulatory agenda. The agenda includes a new mention of a proposed rule to amend the International Traffic in Arms Regulations to allow certain employees involved in ITAR activities to work remotely. The rule will revise the ITAR’s definition of a “regular employee” and clarify the “contractual relationships that meet the definition of regular employee.” The State Department sent the rule for interagency review this month (see 2012080011) and aims to issue the rule in February 2021.

The agency again mentioned rules related to the upcoming reorganization of definitions, exemptions and licensing requirements within the ITAR. The agenda includes aproposed rule to consolidate and clarify ITAR exemptions, which the State Department aims to issue in April, and an interim final rule to reorganize definitions for “clarity and ease of use,” which the agency hopes to publish this month. A State Department official said in October the agency was “very close” to issuing the rule on the ITAR definitions (see 2010220049).

The agenda also continues to mention a final rule that will update the ITAR and the U.S. Munitions List with new export control decisions. The update will reflect changes made by multilateral export regimes, including the Wassenaar Arrangement, during 2019. The State Department aims to issue the rule this month.

The agency again mentioned a final rule that will revise the ITAR to provide definitions for activities that are not exports, reexports or retransfers. The activities include launching items into space, providing technical data to U.S. persons within the U.S. or within a “single country abroad” and transferring a defense article between U.S. territories. The revised definitions will also remove ITAR licensing requirements for the “electronic transmission and storage of unclassified technical data” when the data is sufficiently encrypted. The agency issued an interim final rule last year (see 1912230052) and said it plans to issue the final rule in April 2021.

Agenda Highlights

Highlights of the State Department's trade-related rulemakings that are at the proposed, final or completed stages are below. New items are marked with an asterisk (*).