Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued an Interim Final Rule amending the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to automatically extend Entity List, Military End-User List, and certain other restricted- party controls to any unlisted entity that is at least 50% owned — individually or in the aggregate — by one or more listed parties. The threshold is set to mirror the long-standing OFAC 50% rule. Published 90 FR 47201 (Sept. 30, 2025); effective Sept. 29, 2025. A Temporary General License covering pre-existing transactions with 50%-owned affiliates expired on Nov. 28, 2025. The rule was subsequently suspended for one year by BIS on Nov. 10, 2025 (FR Doc. 2025-19846) as part of the post-Busan US-China understanding.

On 6 September 2024 the Dutch government announced an expansion of its national export-control measure on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, bringing two additional ASML DUV immersion lithography systems — TWINSCAN NXT:1970i and NXT:1980i — under a Dutch national authorisation requirement for shipments to destinations outside the EU. The measure took effect on 7 September 2024 via a ministerial regulation published in Staatscourant 2024 no. 29008. Until this point those two older system variants were controlled extraterritorially through the US Foreign Direct Product Rule; the change transfers licensing authority from BIS to the Dutch government and aligns the Dutch national list more tightly with the perimeter set by the June-2023 measure on NXT:2000i+. ASML characterised the update as a "technical change" with no expected impact on its 2024 financials or longer-term outlook.

The Dutch government announced on 30 June 2023 a new national export-licensing requirement covering specific advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, most prominently ASML's TWINSCAN NXT:2000i and subsequent DUV immersion lithography systems used at ≤14/16nm logic, advanced DRAM, and advanced 3D NAND production. Effective from 1 September 2023 via the national Strategic Goods Decree, the rule completes the trilateral US-Japan-Netherlands chip-equipment perimeter initiated by the January 2023 trilateral agreement. Although nominally country-neutral, the BIS Foreign Direct Product Rule means licences for shipments to "countries of concern" — read: China — face a presumption of denial. Subsequent guidance in 2024 expanded coverage to additional TWINSCAN NXT:1970Ci and 1980Di system variants.

The Bureau of Industry and Security added 77 entities (under 78 entries) to the Entity List via a December 22, 2020 final rule (FR Doc 2020-28031). The headline designation is Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) — China's largest contract chipmaker — for activities related to military-civil fusion (MCF), with a presumption of denial applied to all items uniquely required to produce chips at advanced nodes of 10 nanometers or below. The batch also covers entities that supported PRC militarisation of artificial islands in the South China Sea and entities implicated in human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.