The Bureau of Industry and Security last week issued a correction to its June 14 final rule that added 43 entities to the Entity List, including various Chinese companies that support the country’s military (see 2306120030). BIS said it mistakenly included an entity in its “preamble justification” for the additions “but inadvertently did not instruct, nor provide regulatory text for, the addition of the entity to the Entity List.”

Canada granted the vast majority of license applications to export military goods during the 2022 calendar year, approving about 77% of the 4,747 applications it received, the country said this month. In its annual report on military exports, Canada said it approved 3,656 applications, denied 15, returned-without-action 249, saw 339 withdrawn, and canceled or suspended 22. Four-hundred and sixty-six of them remain under review.

The Bureau of Industry and Security on June 7 withdrew a final rule from interagency review that could have expanded its nuclear nonproliferation export controls, according to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. BIS had sent the rule for review June 5 (see 2306060015). A BIS spokesperson didn’t comment.

Think tank scholars said the World Trade Organization isn't well suited to deal with technology sharing restrictions, but that the G-7 and coordinated bilateral actions have been effective so far.

The Bureau of Industry and Security is working on a new final rule that could expand its nuclear nonproliferation export controls. BIS sent the rule for interagency review June 5, according to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls this week updated its guidance on authorization requests for U.S. persons providing defense services abroad. The document, which was last updated in January (see 2301060022), clarifies how to “identify” U.S. Munitions List defense service categories and commodity categories in the submission letter, states that “support documents” should be submitted as PDFs, notes applicants must address periods of U.S. residency even if they never lived in the U.S., and more.

Companies should be constantly assessing their export control compliance procedures because of the unprecedented pace of regulatory changes, which makes it “easier to be caught,” said Tamer Soliman, a Mayer Brown trade lawyer, speaking during a law conference hosted by the law firm last week. He said the government is “scrutinizing more and more transactions,” particularly as it tries to target Russian sanctions evasion attempts.

Following a recent DOJ settlement with General Motors, U.S. employers should make sure they’re not inadvertently considering export control compliance concerns in a way that discriminates against certain people during their hiring process, Barnes & Thornburg said in a May client alert. The firm said U.S. companies should “carefully review their written policies and procedures” to make sure they “adequately address compliance” with the Immigration and Nationality Act “when assessing whether employees require access to export-controlled information.” Human resource managers “should be particularly sensitive to these issues when hiring and onboarding new employees.”

Although Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company last year secured a one-year authorization to continue certain China-related activities despite the Commerce Department’s October chip controls, the company has “no assurance that we will be able to continue securing such general authorization on a timely basis or at all,” it said in an April Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The Bureau of Industry and Security recently said it’s working with some companies to allow them to continue certain activities authorized by the waivers after they expire (see 2302240008).

U.S. export controls imposed against China’s semiconductor industry in October (see 2211010042) are so far having “only minimal effects” on the country’s artificial intelligence sector, Reuters reported May 3. Although the rules restricted shipments of certain chips “that have become the global technology industry's standard for developing chatbots” and other AI systems, including chips supplied by Nvidia, the U.S. technology company has created “variants of its chips for the Chinese market that are slowed down” to comply with the new license requirements, the report said.