President Joe Biden issued a new executive order to expand existing U.S. sanctions authorities against Belarus and issued a host of new designations targeting the country’s government for last year’s “fraudulent” presidential elections. The Aug. 9 order authorizes sanctions against a broad range of government officials, oligarchs, entities and private companies, including those operating in Belarus’ defense, energy, security, potassium chloride, transportation and construction sectors. Sanctions are also authorized against people or entities with links to “public corruption” in Belarus or transactions deemed to be “deceptive or structured” to evade U.S. sanctions on behalf of the Belarusian government.

A California electronics company was fined $6.6 million by the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls after it illegally exported technical data and software to more than 15 countries, including China, DDTC said Aug. 9. DDTC said Keysight Technologies, which makes electronic test and measurement equipment and software, committed 24 violations of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, including unauthorized exports while the companies still had an outstanding commodity jurisdiction request pending with the State Department.

Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other global anti-bribery regulations is rising, compliance experts said. Companies may still risk violating anti-bribery laws even while working remotely during the pandemic and should make sure their compliance procedures are being followed, they said.

The U.S. needs to expand export and investment restrictions to prevent China from acquiring advanced semiconductor equipment and other sensitive technologies, former national security officials told Congress this week. One official specifically said the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security should impose export controls more actively. Another said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. needs more resources.

Companies seeking to implement global export compliance procedures should be careful to not base their compliance program on only U.S. regulations, especially as more countries introduce export control regimes, industry officials said. New export control regimes in the European Union (see 2105100013), the Philippines and other regions could create compliance challenges and add to resource constraints for global companies if not properly managed, they said.

Measures this year by the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada to boost their foreign investment screening regimes will likely improve their standing with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. and could catapult Germany into CFIUS’s group of excepted foreign states, observers said. Although Germany could become an excepted state, each country has tightened its screening tools to further scrutinize certain foreign direct investments, which will likely lead to more investment hurdles for their respective industries.

A rise in U.S. secondary sanctions is increasingly leading to issues in Europe about how companies perform global sanctions compliance while simultaneously avoiding violating the European Union’s blocking regulations, trade lawyers said. Until the U.S. changes its sanctions approach -- which is possible under the Biden administration -- those disputes are expected to continue rising, the lawyers said.

The confirmation of two Treasury Department nominees slated to oversee the agency’s sanctions work may be in jeopardy over the Biden administration's decision not to sanction the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

The Biden administration should expand the Bureau of Industry and Security, establish a clear definition for critical technologies and improve information sharing to boost corporate due diligence as part of a national technology strategy, national security experts said. BIS specifically has a larger role to play to protect the U.S. technology supply chain, which should extend beyond just export controls, the Center for a New American Security said in a July 29 report.

The Federal Maritime Commission this week issued a series of long-awaited recommendations to address issues in the international freight delivery system that have been exacerbated over the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The recommendations, which resulted from Commissioner Rebecca Dye’s fact-finding mission that began in March 2020, aim to minimize barriers to Shipping Act enforcement and better allow the FMC to “facilitate prompt and fair dispute resolution,” Dye said July 28.