The State Department has been approving the vast majority of export license applications involving South Korea, a senior agency official said this week, stressing that the government doesn’t want to be an impediment to defense trade with the close U.S. ally.
Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South and Central Asia, announced Sept. 15 that he has introduced a bill to authorize the president to sanction current and former Pakistani officials under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act for allegedly violating human rights and undermining democracy.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., urged Congress Sept. 15 to pass two pending Russia sanctions bills to pressure Moscow to end its war against Ukraine.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned a network of people and companies that it said are helping Iran move money, sell oil and evade international sanctions. The designations target financial facilitators in Iran, as well as more than a dozen people and companies based in Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.
A new State Department export license exemption for underwater drones provides “new flexibility” for companies using those drones for certain commercial and scientific operations, but companies still need to set “careful compliance guardrails” to make sure they’re using the exemption correctly, K&L Gates said in a client alert.
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The State Department is changing the way it treats exports of unmanned drones, a shift that's expected to allow firms to more easily obtain export approvals.
The Bureau of Industry and Security has removed certain export restrictions from aircraft belonging to Belavia, the state-owned flagship carrier of Belarus, as part of sanctions relief that the Trump administration has offered to the country in recent days.
Beijing criticized the Bureau of Industry and Security's decision last week to add a range of Chinese entities to the Entity List (see 2509120077), saying the U.S. has "generalized national security and abused export controls to impose sanctions on numerous Chinese entities in sectors such as semiconductors, biotechnology, aerospace, and trade and logistics."
Beijing is investigating whether U.S. chip policies -- including export controls, tariffs and other trade restrictions -- are discriminating against China’s semiconductor sector by suppressing its firms from developing advanced technologies. China also launched an antidumping investigation on imports of certain U.S. analog chips.