​​The two lawmakers who spearheaded last year's House ocean shipping reform bill plan to introduce new legislation this week that could further expand the Federal Maritime Commission’s authority. Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said he and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., plan to introduce the “Ocean Shipping Reform Act 2.0,” which could “undo some of the damage the Senate did” to revise OSRA before it passed both chambers in June.

The Bureau of Industry and Society’s export enforcement arm is ramping up outreaches to exporters amid a rise in new restrictions against Russia and China, said Christopher Grigg, a former DOJ official. Grigg, now a lawyer with Nixon Peabody, said the agency’s Office of Export Enforcement is contacting more companies to specifically vet their record-keeping procedures.

The Census Bureau is still deciding whether to introduce a country of origin reporting requirement in the Automated Export System despite receiving mostly opposing comments on the proposal, with trade groups saying the change could lead to costly compliance challenges (see 2203160026 and 2301230008). Gerry Horner, chief of the agency’s trade regulations branch, said the division should be meeting with upper management “very soon” to decide on the best path forward.

The head of TikTok said the U.S. shouldn't have concerns about its parent company, ByteDance, even as lawmakers said they believe the Chinese government can use the company to access sensitive data collected by the app. TikTok CEO Shou Chew said the app is not controlled by China and said it has built a firewall to prevent U.S. personal data from “unauthorized foreign access.”

The Bureau of Industry and Security this week added 32 parties to its Unverified List after it was unable to verify their “legitimacy and reliability” for receiving export-controlled items. The additions include 14 entries in China, five in the United Arab Emirates, four in Turkey, two in Germany and one each in Bulgaria, Canada, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The EU is “assessing” whether to create an outbound investment screening regime, which could help it address “gaps” in its dual-use export controls, Valdis Dombrovskis, the bloc’s top trade official, told the European Parliament this week. “We're currently at the exploratory stage,” he said.

New frequently asked questions on the Bureau of Industry and Security's October China chip controls are “almost through their clearance process,” Sharron Cook, a BIS official, said during a Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting this week. “Those should be up shortly,” she said.

The Bureau of Industry and Security will soon request feedback from industry, academia and others on key differences in U.S. and EU interpretations of export control provisions, said Charles Wall, BIS’ senior policy adviser for the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council. Wall, speaking during a BIS technical advisory committee meeting this week, said the notice will ask for “very specific information” on discrepancies between the two territories' export control regimes and ways those rules can be harmonized.

The Bureau of Industry and Security is hoping its new Disruptive Technology Strike Force leads to more investigations of export control violations, faster prosecutions and more criminal enforcement actions, said John Sonderman, director of the BIS Office of Export Enforcement. The agency also is looking to clamp down on U.S.-origin items ending up in Iranian drones, said Kevin Kurland of OEE, warning that companies should make sure they’re complying with the new Iran Foreign Direct Product Rule issued last month.

The Commerce Department this week released proposed “guardrails” for recipients of Chips Act funding, which could restrict how the funding is used in certain countries and align the guardrails with export restrictions. The proposed rule would block funding recipients from pursuing certain chip investments in China and other “foreign countries of concern,” restrict them from participating in certain research or technology licensing efforts with those countries, prevent the funding from being provided to companies on the Entity List and more, Commerce said.