CBP is ending a special bond program for export consolidators at the Miami and Port Everglades ports of entry, it said in a notice. The agency is giving participants in the In-Bond Export Consolidator (IBEC) Program a one-year grace period, until Feb. 11, 2023, to “transition their facility status to either a customs bonded warehouse, container freight station, foreign trade zone, or a facility operated as a non-vessel operating common carrier, depending on their business needs, and also obtain the appropriate bond(s).”
The Office of Foreign Assets Control is removing sanctions regulations on Burundi, it said in a notice. It follows President Joe Biden's Nov. 18 executive order (see 2111180014) declaring an end to the state of national emergency in Burundi, citing the "significantly altered" situation over the past year, "including the transfer of power following elections in 2020, significantly decreased violence, and ... reforms across multiple sectors."
The Commerce Department should expand an exemption to allow U.S. companies to participate in standards-setting bodies that have members designated on the Entity List (see 2006160035), the Information Technology Industry Council said in a set of recommendations to the Biden administration. If the exemption isn’t expanded, the U.S. will risk ceding further “ground, influence, and leadership to foreign competitors” in international technology standards development, ITI said Feb. 10.
The Bureau of Industry and Security will add seven entities to the Entity List for nuclear and nonproliferation reasons. The entities are for one company in China, five in Pakistan and one in the United Arab Emirates. The Chinese company will be subject to a license review policy of presumption of denial for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations, and the other entities will be subject to certain nuclear end-user licensing restrictions. No license exceptions will be available for the entities. BIS will also make some corrections and clarifications to existing entries on the Entity List. The additions take effect upon publication in the Federal Register, scheduled for Feb. 14.
The State Department has crafted new guidelines for preparing defense trade agreements and plans to release them soon, said Catherine Hamilton, licensing director at the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. She said the agency also plans to make changes to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations to reflect the new document, which would update submission guidelines for Technical Assistance Agreements, Manufacturing License Agreements, and Warehouse and Distribution Agreements.
The U.K.'s House of Commons held a debate session titled "Kazakhstan: Anti-corruption Sanctions" Feb. 3 to discuss imposing restrictive measures on bad actors in the Central Asian nation. Margaret Hodge, who chairs the All-Party Parliament Group -- an informal collection of cross-party groups with no official status in Parliament -- said the U.K. should use its global anti-corruption sanctions regime to designate the "kleptocrats" in Kazakhstan. Hodge called for sanctions on 24 individuals, all of whom she said have benefited from the alleged kleptocracy at the heart of the Kazakh government. Many of those individuals are related to the Kazakh president.
The U.K. amended two entries under its Global Anti-Corruption sanctions regime, in a Feb. 8 financial sanctions notice. The amended entries are for Ashraf Said Ahmed Hussein Ali, who has been involved in corruption in South Sudan, and Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who has taken part in the misappropriation of public funds in Equatorial Guinea, the notice said. An asset freeze remains in effect for each.
The EU released information Feb. 8 about the status of its member states' implementation of a regime for the brokering, technical assistance, transit, transfer and control of exports of dual-use items. An EU regulation mandated, among other things, that the member states employ a dual-use export control program, but the European Commission found that only eight nations have either partially or fully implemented the program. Those countries are Belgium, Croatia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland. The bloc's largest economies, on the other hand, including France, Germany, Spain and Italy, have not implemented the export controls program.
The White House this week released an updated list of critical and emerging technology categories that are important to national security, including a new subset of “novel, advanced technologies” for each category. The updated list, first issued in 2020 as part of a national strategy to better coordinate agency efforts amid technology competition with China (see 2010150038), will help guide “new and existing efforts to promote U.S. technological leadership,” the White House said. The list could intersect with work being done by the Bureau of Industry and Security, which is crafting export controls over various emerging and foundational technologies as part of the Export Control Reform Act (see 2201280045). Similarly, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. may be more inclined to scrutinize transactions involving sensitive and emerging technologies (see 2112140011).
Although the Commerce and State departments have been able to conduct some export end-use checks during the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said both agencies continue to face challenges scheduling on-site inspections.