The U.S. is stepping up efforts to boost liquefied natural gas exports to Europe as the Russia-Ukraine war drags on, Jose Fernandez, a senior State Department official, said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this week. He said he recently met with several European countries that are asking to buy more U.S. LNG.
U.S. export controls on artificial intelligence may not be the right strategy to hinder Chinese progress in certain AI subfields, including machine learning, Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology said in a report this week. While the controls may seem “attractive in the abstract,” the report said most decoupling regimes are “imperfect and frequently act as a hindrance, rather than an absolute bar, to a rival’s technological progress.”
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A centrist think-tank says that red tape at the border costs U.S. exporters more than twice what they pay in tariffs, and says that the U.S. should continue to push for trade facilitation measures. The World Trade Organization passed a Trade Facilitation Agreement, but developing countries did not have to implement it immediately, and even five years after it went into force about 23% of its provisions have not been implemented. Only half of signatories have established a single window, which helps exporters and importers file most documents electronically. The WTO estimated that full implementation would reduce trade costs by 14.3%.
Two technical committees that advise the Bureau of Industry and Security plan to work together on a proposal to create a "trusted exporter" program, similar to the trusted trader program for importers. Sensors and Instrumentation Technical Advisory Committee Co-Chair Jennifer O'Bryan said during a July 26 quarterly meeting of SINTAC that the Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee wants to work on such a proposal.
The Commerce Department is prioritizing work to strengthen its export controls and investment restrictions, particularly with allies, Commerce Deputy Secretary Don Graves said, speaking during a July 25 event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He said the U.S. is continuing to rethink the existing multilateral control regimes and believes the global sanctions response to Russia has set a precedent for how democracies could respond to similar aggression by other countries in the future.
India has substantially increased imports of Russian crude oil in the last few months and could start buying even more, said Reid l’Anson, a commodity economist with Kpler, during a July 22 webinar hosted by the Atlantic Council. India is on pace this month to buy 1 million Russian barrels per day, a significant surge from pre-invasion levels, l’Anson said.
The U.S. should shift away from only using export controls as a technology competition strategy against China and instead turn to domestic investment, Ling Chen, a Wilson Center China fellow, said in a July report funded by the think tank. “Weaponizing” supply chains will only “galvanize” China, the report said, causing it to “accelerate” its technological development. “The effect of the tech war may be counterproductive for the United States,” the report said.
The EU this week adopted new sanctions and export controls against Russia in an effort to tighten existing restrictions against the country for its war in Ukraine. The package imposes new bans on the purchase, import or transfer of gold originating in Russia and restricts more exports of dual-use technologies. The measures also extend the EU’s port access ban to better limit Russia’s ability to evade sanctions and expand the scope of restrictions surrounding certain deposits.
Although the U.S. should be concerned about university espionage and research theft, it shouldn’t place restrictions on fundamental research, said Arati Prabhakar, President Joe Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, speaking during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing this week. She said the U.S. has some “real issues” involving research security, which “have to be wrestled with” but not in a way that stifles innovation and hurts American competitiveness.