Biden Admin Relaunching Export Administration Advisory Subcommittee

The Biden administration will soon add another industry advisory committee to provide input on U.S. export control regulations.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said this week the administration is “reconstituting” the President’s Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration, whose charter expired in 2019 and which will help advise the government on U.S. chip export controls as well as other restrictions. The agency soon will publish a formal notice soliciting members for the subcommittee, known as PECSEA, Raimondo said.

Speaking during a Nov. 29 meeting of the President’s Export Council, which has held meetings this year after years of inactivity (see 2306210002), Raimondo said the subcommittee is looking for “senior executives” and “senior product people” to serve as members. “We need the people at the cutting edge of technology so the government can work hand in glove with companies,” she said.

Raimondo said she hopes the new subcommittee establishes a “continuous” line of dialogue between government and the private sector as opposed to the two sides only communicating when the administration is thinking through new export controls. “It's not enough to say, we get a piece of intelligence that some equipment has to be controlled, and then we call industry feverishly,” she said. “We want to have a constant, continuous dialogue with industry so it can be more strategic.”

She also said the group could help the administration better balance new export licensing requirements with efforts to promote U.S. export competitiveness. “We don't want to over-control because then we deny U.S. companies revenue that you need to grow. But we can't under-control because then our adversaries get access to our cutting-edge technology and use it against us,” Raimondo said. “We need to find that magic line of what we control.”

The Bureau of Industry and Security already receives input from several technical advisory committees on export control issues, and each of them meets multiple times per year.