The Biden administration should take several steps to boost U.S. agricultural exports, including by negotiating new free trade deals and better eliminating tariff and nontariff barriers, industry executives said during a President’s Export Council meeting this week. They also urged the administration to enforce existing trade agreements and more quickly make progress in reforming the World Trade Organization.
DOJ is increasingly prioritizing corporate enforcement against executives -- regardless of how high they rank -- and is more frequently looking to take those cases to trial, said Marshall Miller, principal associate deputy attorney general.
The Biden administration will soon add another industry advisory committee to provide input on U.S. export control regulations.
The Biden administration should investigate all Chinese lidar technology companies to determine whether they should be placed on the Entity List or made subject to U.S. investment restrictions, the House Select Committee on China said in a letter this week. The lawmakers said lidar, or light detection and ranging, is being used in autonomous systems and robotics but isn’t subject to export controls, potentially allowing a loophole for Chinese companies to acquire U.S. technologies for use in lidar systems that can aid the country’s military.
The House Oversight Committee is probing the Bureau of Industry and Security's 90-day suspension of new export licenses for firearms, saying the potentially “extralegal” decision was made with no explanation and infringes on the Commerce Department’s goal of increasing U.S. competitiveness. Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., in a letter this week to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, requested a briefing on the issue by Dec. 5 and asked for a range of agency documents before Dec. 12, including any related to the decision-making process that led to the suspension announcement.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control’s historic fine of virtual currency exchange Binance could signal more enforcement action against fintech companies, particularly those that may be cutting corners within their sanctions compliance programs, law firms said this month. They also said the case shows OFAC may specifically be targeting companies that don’t have enough compliance buy-in from senior management.
A senior State Department official this week said the U.S. is planning to eventually include other nations in an ongoing effort to reduce burdensome defense export control requirements for Australia and the U.K. In perhaps the strongest endorsement yet by a U.S. official of the concept, Bonnie Jenkins, undersecretary for arms control and international security, said the U.S. wants to involve other nations after it works through its current process under the Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) partnership.
Six users of the virtual currency mixer Tornado Cash are appealing a U.S. court decision that upheld sanctions against the cryptocurrency service, saying the Treasury Department illegally stretched its authorities “beyond recognition” when it designated Tornado Cash last year. The six people argued that U.S. sanctions laws don’t allow Treasury to designate an “open-source software project” like Tornado Cash because it doesn’t meet the definition of “property” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The Commerce Department quietly stopped approving new licenses for firearms exports to three Latin American countries months before publicly announcing a broader suspension in October for dozens of other nations.
Risk intelligence firm Kharon has found nearly 700 additional entities that may be subject to sanctions as a result of the more than 200 Russia-related designations announced by the U.S. and the U.K. earlier this month (see 2311020015 and 2311080031). The firm said the additional companies, located across more than 20 jurisdictions, are majority owned by the new U.S.- and U.K.-sanctioned targets but weren’t publicly named in the two governments’ announcements.