Companies should avoid internal policies that require them to disclose all potential sanctions and export control violations to the government, lawyers with Foley Hoag said this week. Although it may seem like a sound compliance policy, the lawyers said that language can backfire, including in cases where a voluntary disclosure may not be the best option.
Ian Cohen
Ian Cohen, Deputy Managing Editor, is a reporter with Export Compliance Daily and its sister publications International Trade Today and Trade Law Daily, where he covers export controls, sanctions and international trade issues. He previously worked as a local government reporter in South Florida. Ian graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Florida in 2017 and lives in Washington, D.C. He joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2019.
The two authors of a bipartisan bill to boost U.S. technology competitiveness were lukewarm this week about the prospect of allocating more export control resources to the Commerce Department and stopped short of promising it more money, with one calling on the agency to be more efficient with what it has. And while they said they support Commerce’s updated China-related semiconductor export controls, they also said the U.S. should devote as much attention to expanding trade with close allies as it does to restricting trade with adversaries.
The European Commission this week released a package of proposals that could lead to new restrictions for a host of transactions involving dual-use technologies, including by expanding the bloc’s screening of inbound investments, improving export control coordination among member states and studying the possibility of new outbound investment restrictions.
The U.S. likely will face challenges trying to place export controls on RISC-V, an open-source semiconductor architecture that policymakers fear China may use to evade export restrictions and leapfrog their U.S. competitors, Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology said this week.
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week expanded its export controls against Russia and Belarus to cover a broader range of items and Harmonized System codes, including more industrial materials and aircraft parts. The agency also added new controls to better restrict exports used in Iran’s drone production, revised the de minimis treatment for certain military and spacecraft-related items, added a new license requirement exclusion and more.
Although U.S. lawmakers have called on the Biden administration to develop a set of sanctions it could immediately impose against China if Beijing were to invade Taiwan, experts told a think tank this week that it remains unclear how exactly the U.S. would respond, including whether it would use military force.
The Bureau of Industry and Security last week removed three companies from the Unverified List after it was able to successfully complete end-use checks.
The U.S., the EU and other countries imposing export controls against Russia need to better harmonize their restrictions, including by developing a “centralized” list of controlled dual-use goods, treating license applications the same way across all jurisdictions and creating coalition-wide foreign direct product rule restrictions, researchers said this month. They also said enforcement authorities need to impose harsher fines against corporations involved in illegally sending goods to Russia to incentivize them to invest more heavily in compliance.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is renewing a push to pass a bipartisan bill that could expand the Treasury Department’s upcoming outbound investment prohibitions to cover more Chinese technology sectors and additional countries. But some lawmakers disagree on the best way to scope U.S. investment restrictions under the bill, arguing that they should be imposed through individual sanctions on specific entities rather than on whole technology industries.
The Treasury Department declined a request by the two leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to impose Global Magnitsky sanctions against leading Chinese surveillance company Hikvision for human rights violations, Chair Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said this week.