Nazak Nikakhtar, acting head of the Bureau of Industry and Security during the Trump administration, blamed the deep state for a lack of urgency in confronting China, during a podcast interview with China Talk. Nikakhtar did not use that term, but said that it was hard for Commerce Department career officials to shift their thinking from promoting exports of goods to restricting exports or investment. Nikakhtar was previously a civil servant herself, working on antidumping and countervailing duty cases and negotiations with China.
The House of Representatives plans to vote on several export control-related bills next week, including the Remote Access Security Act, which is designed to close a loophole that has allowed China to use cloud service providers to access advanced U.S. computing chips remotely.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The U.K. this week suspended a range of export licenses for Israel that it said are being used to ship items to the Israeli military, though members of Parliament pushed the government to impose a broader ban, including an arms embargo.
Defense firm RTX Corp. will pay $200 million to settle alleged violations of U.S. defense export controls, the largest standalone export penalty ever issued by the State Department. RTX voluntarily disclosed the 750 violations, the agency said in a charging letter, most of which involved “historical” issues by an aerospace firm acquired by RTX in 2018.
The Treasury Department issued a final rule this week that will make investment advisers subject to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing requirements, which it said will close a loophole that allows criminal actors to hide money in the U.S. and sanctioned companies to access sensitive technology through investments in American firms.
The U.S. removed sanctions from a former board member of one of Russia’s largest private banks more than two years after he submitted a delisting petition and about 10 months after he sued the State Department for stalling a decision on that petition without explanation.
The Federal Maritime Commission this week ordered German container shipper Hamburg Sud to pay $17.6 million to OJ Commerce, an American e-commerce business, adding millions of dollars to the penalty an administrative law judge imposed last year after Hamburg retaliated against OJC for threatening to file a complaint with the FMC. The commission also appeared to adopt a broader interpretation of carrier "refusal to deal" violations.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Some companies are struggling to meet a due diligence threshold set by the U.S. government for sales to foreign suppliers accused of illegal sales to Russia, said Anne van de Heetkamp, vice president of product management for global trade intelligence at Descartes Systems Group.