Census, BIS Resume Work on Routed Export Rule

The Census Bureau and the Bureau of Industry and Security have restarted work on their long-awaited routed export rule and hope to make more progress in the next year, said Gerry Horner, chief of the Census Trade Regulations Branch.

Horner said the two agencies met Nov. 30 for the first time in months to discuss the rule, which is expected to include major changes to the process around assigning filing responsibilities to forwarders and to address information sharing among parties in routed export transactions (see 2006020049). The effort has been delayed several times over the past few years, partly because the government has lacked the resources to fully focus on it (see 2310180069), especially because BIS has been busy implementing a host of Russia-related export controls (see 2209130034).

Horner didn’t specifically say what the two sides discussed during the November meeting, but he said it bodes well for progress in the coming months. “I think the good news for you all today is that we are reconvening to go over some of the critical issues that paused the working on this in the past,” he said during a meeting last week of the Commerce Department’s Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee.

Census and BIS had another meeting planned for last week, and “hopefully by the February” RPTAC meeting, “we should have more details to report to you on that,” Horner said. “So that is a good thing. It looks like we're moving back to addressing the issues” around routed exports.