Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2668 actions· ✨ 89 recent

The Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration published a Federal Register notice on 10 April 2026 (91 FR 18412, doc 2026-06952) opening the inaugural Call for Proposals for the American AI Exports Program established under Executive Order 14320. Proposals are accepted from 1 April 2026 through 5:00 pm EDT on 30 June 2026 from US industry-led "pre-set" consortia offering full-stack American AI export packages — AI-optimised hardware, data pipelines, AI models and systems, security and cybersecurity measures, and sector-specific applications — for presentation by the US government to foreign public- and private-sector buyers. Designated consortia receive priority US-government advocacy, priority consideration for export-control licence engagement, interagency coordination, and federal-financing referrals (EXIM, DFC), with a 14-business-day completeness review and 60-calendar-day designation decision once a proposal is deemed complete.

On 13 May 2025, two days before the AI Diffusion Rule's primary 15 May 2025 compliance date, the Trump administration's BIS announced it would rescind the Biden-era Framework for AI Diffusion (90 FR 4544) and simultaneously issued three guidance documents that re-routed US AI export policy through existing EAR authorities. The package comprises (1) GP10 guidance asserting that all ECCN 3A090 ICs designed by PRC-headquartered firms are presumptively EAR-violative, with Huawei Ascend 910B/910C/910D processors named explicitly — making US- and non-US-person use, transfer, financing, or servicing of those chips anywhere in the world a presumptive General Prohibition 10 violation; (2) a policy statement warning industry that supplying US advanced computing ICs for training or inference of Chinese AI models risks EAR enforcement; and (3) industry guidance on diversion-prevention diligence. BIS stated a formal Federal Register rescission and replacement rule would follow.

President Trump signed Executive Order 14179 on 23 January 2025 (published in the Federal Register on 31 January 2025 as 90 FR 8741, doc 2025-02172). The order revokes Biden-era Executive Order 14110 of 30 October 2023 ("Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence") and directs federal agencies to identify and rescind, revise, or suspend any policies, regulations, memoranda, or guidance documents adopted pursuant to the revoked Biden order. It mandates that the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy develop an AI Action Plan within 180 days to "sustain and enhance America's global AI dominance." The plan was released on 23 July 2025. EO 14179 reframes US AI industrial-policy posture from safety-first regulation to deregulation, infrastructure investment, and export-competitiveness.

The Bureau of Industry and Security signed an Interim Final Rule on 13 January 2025 (90 FR 4544, published 15 January 2025) introducing the first horizontal export-control regime for advanced AI compute and closed-weight model weights. It revised ECCN 3A090 advanced-IC thresholds, created a new ECCN 4E091 covering closed-weight model weights trained on more than 10^26 operations, and bucketed every destination worldwide into a three-tier country group: Tier 1 (~18 close allies, license-free flows), Tier 2 (the rest of the world, per-country compute caps with National VEU and Universal VEU pathways), Tier 3 (US arms-embargoed destinations including China and Russia under comprehensive denial). It added license exceptions AIA, ACM, and LPP and set staggered compliance dates of 15 May 2025 (general) and 15 January 2026 (data-center / model-weight provisions). The Trump administration's BIS rescinded the rule on 13 May 2025 — two days before the primary compliance date — but it was on the books for four months and shaped allied compliance build-out and the architecture of subsequent US AI export controls.

BIS final rule (FR Doc 2024-13148, 89 FR 51644, RIN 0694-AJ87) expanding the Export Administration Regulations' Russia and Belarus sanctions architecture. Effective 12 June 2024 (most provisions) and 16 September 2024 (the EAR99 enterprise-software paragraph at §746.8(a)(8)), the rule introduces a new licence requirement for thirteen named categories of EAR99 enterprise software (ERP, CRM, BI, SCM, EDW, CMMS, project management, PLM, BIM, CAD, CAM, ETO) destined for Russia or Belarus; permits address-only Entity List designations to capture high-diversion addresses; adds eight Hong Kong addresses to the Entity List; and refines the Russia/Belarus Industry Sector Sanctions and Foreign Direct Product (FDP) rule. Released the day before the G7 Italy summit alongside coordinated OFAC, State, and Treasury actions that together designated 300+ persons and entities.

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), enacted as Division H of P.L. 118-50 (21st Century Peace through Strength Act), prohibits app stores and internet hosting services from distributing, maintaining, or updating "foreign adversary controlled applications" — defined explicitly to include ByteDance Ltd and its subsidiaries (TikTok). ByteDance was given 270 days from enactment (until January 19, 2025) to execute a "qualified divestiture" — selling TikTok to an owner with no operational relationship with a foreign adversary — or face a nationwide distribution ban. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law's constitutionality in TikTok, Inc. v. Garland (January 17, 2025), rejecting First Amendment challenges and affirming the national-security rationale grounded in data-collection concerns.