The State Department approved a potential military sale to Belgium worth about $380 million, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Nov. 8. The sale is for “AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles” and related equipment. The principal contractor will be Raytheon Missile Systems.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is seeking public comments on an information collection related to “miscellaneous licensing responsibilities and enforcement.” The collection involves various activities that “do not involve submission of documents to the BIS but instead involve exchange of documents among parties in the export transaction to ensure that each party understands its obligations under U.S. law,” the agency said in a notice released this week. Other activities involve writing export control statements on shipping documents or reporting “unforeseen changes in shipping and disposition of exported commodities.” The activities are needed by the Office of Export Enforcement and CBP to document exports and enforce the Export Administration Regulations. Comments are due Jan. 9.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls said Nov. 7 it was running into a “delay generating customer service cases from the DDTCCustomerService@state.gov email” and Defense Export Control and Compliance System tickets. DDTC said it has since resolved the problem. Questions can be directed to the Help Desk at 202-663-2838 and the Response Team at 202-663-1282.
The U.S. and the EU agreed to continue building on U.S. liquid natural gas exports to Europe and hope to supply an additional 50 billion cubic meters in 2023 compared with 2021, according to a joint statement released Nov. 7. The U.S. exported about 48 BCM to the EU from January through October, the statement said, 26 BCM more than in all of 2021. “Building on this trend, the participants committed to work on keeping a high level of LNG supplies to Europe in 2023.” The U.S. and the EU earlier this year announced an initiative to reduce European dependency on Russian energy in a bid to further isolate Moscow amid its war in Ukraine (see 2203250035).
The Federal Maritime Commission hired Phillip "Chris" Hughey as general counsel, where he will provide legal advice and recommendations to the FMC chair and commissioners on regulatory and policy matters, the commission announced Nov. 7. Hughey has previously served as the commission’s deputy general counsel and most recently worked as a foreign service officer with the State Department. Katia Kroutil had been serving as the commission’s acting general counsel and is now listed on the FMC’s website as acting assistant general counsel for general law and regulation.
The State Department approved two potential military sales, to Australia and Finland, worth more than $6.8 billion combined, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Nov. 1.
The International Trade Commission, which is tasked with measuring the economic impact of the USMCA's stringent auto rules of origin, heard from auto industry players in the U.S. and Mexico that satisfying the labor value content audits is next-to-impossible.
The State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls recently posted a name change update for the U.K. government and waived the requirement for amendments to change approved license authorizations because of the “volume” of authorizations requiring amendments to reflect the change, DDTC said. The U.K. government's entity name “Her Majesty the Queen” was changed to “His Majesty the King.” Currently approved authorizations identifying “Her Majesty the Queen” will not require an amendment to reflect the change, DDTC said, but new authorizations should be updated.
The Center for a New American Security this week launched a Task Force on Biotechnology and American Competitiveness, which will convene government officials with experts from industry and academia to “respond to critical challenges at the nexus of U.S. national security and biotechnology,” CNAS said in an emailed news release. The group will recommend “actionable recommendations” to improve American competitiveness in the biotechnology landscape, including synthetic biology, pharmaceuticals and genomic editing. Michael Chertoff, former U.S. secretary of homeland security, chairs the task force; Martijn Rasser, CNAS Technology and National Security Program director, is the executive director of the Task Force. CNAS said it will announce the groups’ members “at a later date.”
The U.S. should take action against TikTok to prevent sensitive U.S. personal data from being collected by the app’s Chinese owner, said Brendan Carr, one of five commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission. “I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban," Carr told Axios, according to a Nov. 1 report by the news outlet. Carr added that there isn't "a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party]."