The U.S. and the EU plan to increase cooperation to better protect the “leakage” of sensitive technologies, including through export controls, foreign direct investment reviews and outbound investment screening, President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last week. In a joint statement after a March 10 meeting at the White House, the two leaders committed to increasing cooperative efforts to prevent “sensitive emerging technologies” and other dual-use items from going to “destinations of concern that operate civil-military fusion strategies.”

Government employees reviewing arms transfers and foreign military sales are tasked with too much work, Mira Resnick, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for regional security, said during an event last week hosted by the Stimson Center. Despite the heavy workload, Resnick said, the agency is working to speed up decisions surrounding arms transfers and is working with the Defense Department to make the Foreign Military Sales program more efficient.

The Bureau of Industry and Security plans to expand its university outreach program to include more schools that may be working on export-controlled technologies, said Matt Axelrod, the agency’s top export enforcement official. Axelrod, speaking during an academic security seminar last week, also outlined the BIS compliance expectations for researchers, warning that not all fundamental research is exempt from export licensing requirements.

The Biden administration's FY 2024 budget request includes funding to support a new outbound investment review “program” and more money for U.S. agencies to carry out export control and sanctions authorities.

The U.S. this week removed sanctions on a former Kazakhstan-based subsidiary of Russia’s Sberbank after the subsidiary changed ownership and asked the Treasury Department to delete the bank from its Specially Designated Nationals List. The subsidiary, now owned by the Kazakhstan government, is "one of the largest banks in Kazakhstan" and "systemically important to the Kazakhstani financial industry," a Treasury spokesperson said March 8, adding that the agency worked "closely" with the Kazakhstan government to help it complete the purchase.

The Netherlands this week announced plans to impose new export controls on advanced semiconductor production equipment, a move the U.S. hopes will align it more closely with American restrictions on exports to China. The new Dutch controls (see 2302160011) will target specific chip technologies “in which the Netherlands has a unique and leading position,” Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher said in a letter to the country’s parliament, adding that any additional restrictions should be imposed multilaterally.

The Bureau of Industry and Security should “significantly” strengthen export controls against Huawei to further restrict the Chinese technology company from buying U.S.-origin items, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in a March 6 letter to the agency. Although McCaul applauded its use of the Entity List and the foreign direct product rule to “curtail Huawei’s unconstrained march to dominate 5G telecommunications systems globally,” he said more should be done.

Corporations can take a number of steps to make sure their compliance procedures will allow them to qualify for potential declinations under DOJ’s new corporate enforcement policies, lawyers said this week. But they also said certain parts of the new DOJ policies could be clearer, including the agency’s definition for “extraordinary” cooperation during an investigation.

Senators unveiled legislation this week that would give the administration new authority to block transactions with TikTok and other foreign technology products that threaten U.S. national security. The bill, which has bipartisan support and was endorsed by the White House, would require the Commerce Department to establish new procedures to prohibit or mitigate transactions involving information and communications technology products “in which any foreign adversary has any interest and poses undue or unacceptable risk to national security.”

Although many of the U.S. sanctions against Russia have been in place for months, companies are still dealing with a range of compliance challenges, Crowell & Moring trade lawyers said this week, especially involving Russia-related service restrictions. They also said they don’t expect the pace of sanctions to slow anytime soon, especially as the U.S. ramps up enforcement efforts this year.