President Joe Biden said that the agreement to lift 25% tariffs on European steel and 10% tariffs on European aluminum and replace them with tariff rate quotas "immediately removes tariffs" in the European Union on a range of American products. However, the removal is not so immediate. The member states will have to vote on removing the tariffs before they are lifted, according to an EU spokesperson.
The new Department of Justice enforcement and disclosure policies (see 2110280051) could substantially increase scrutiny on corporate trade violators, law firms said, especially those with a history of misconduct. The policies, announced last week by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, revealed the Biden administration’s “extensive agenda that is designed to be tough” on corporations, Wiley Rein said, and may foreshadow more changes. “As she made clear,” the firm said Oct. 29, “the Biden DOJ is serious about revamping corporate enforcement and this is just the first wave of reform.”
“Very few” of the Chinese military’s artificial intelligence equipment suppliers face specific U.S. export controls, allowing China’s defense industry access to a range of sensitive U.S. technologies, Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology said in an October report. The absence of specific export restrictions over AI suppliers highlights significant “gaps” in U.S. export control policies, the report said, and could lead to “lapses in due diligence” by U.S. exporters.
The U.S. should continue to impose export controls on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment and machinery but be careful about restricting sales of finished semiconductor products to China, Chinese economics and technology policy experts said. Controls on finished products may risk hurting U.S. semiconductor exporters and would not stop China from importing those goods elsewhere, they said.
The Department of Justice this week announced new initiatives to “strengthen” its enforcement of corporate crime, which could have wide-ranging effects on cases involving export controls, sanctions and foreign bribery violations. The initiatives were presented by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco as “changes” to the agency’s enforcement policies, including how DOJ will calculate mitigation when assessing penalties, how it will weigh past misconduct for unrelated violations and how it will use independent monitors to ensure compliance with settlement agreements.
Shippers were caught off guard by a new surcharge announced this week by the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports that could exacerbate unfair detention and demurrage fees, members of the Federal Maritime Commission’s Shipper Advisory Committee said. The ports announced a surcharge to ocean carriers for containers that dwell at terminals, a fee that will likely be passed on to shippers, members said during the committee’s inaugural meeting Oct. 27 (see 2109100008 and 2110140001).
Although the Bureau of Industry and Security's new export controls on cybersecurity items are intended to restrict only malicious exports, they could place wide-ranging compliance burdens on the entire cybersecurity sector, law firms said. Technology companies and others operating in the sector still have time to convince BIS to narrow the scope of the rule, which takes effect in January but contains several “ambiguities,” firms said.
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A U.S.-based technology company “likely” violated U.S. export controls against Huawei for more than a year but hasn't yet faced penalties by the Bureau of Industry and Security, Republican staff on the Senate Commerce Committee said Oct. 26. The committee’s minority staff said Seagate Technology likely continued shipping hard disk drives to Huawei after BIS amended its foreign direct product rule last year, which imposed controls on goods that are the direct product of certain technology or software subject to the Export Administration Regulations (see 2005150058 and 2008170029).
The Commerce Department needs to address several “urgent shortcomings” in its export control policies toward China (see 2110180016) and impose stricter export restrictions and license denials for sensitive goods and suppliers of Chinese military companies, a group of Republican lawmakers said in a letter to Secretary Gina Raimondo. The 17 Republicans, all members of the House’s China Task Force, also said the Bureau of Industry and Security should commit to a timeline for releasing more emerging and foundational technology controls and issue “appropriate” restrictions on fundamental research and open-source technology platforms.