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

BIS amended the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to revise Country Group designations for Ukraine, Mexico, and Cyprus, effective immediately on publication (85 FR 83756, FR Doc 2020-26552). Ukraine was elevated from Country Group D to Country Group B, making it newly eligible for eight EAR license exceptions (LVS, TMP, RPL, GFT, BAG, AVS, APR, ENC) and shifting dual-use export licensing to a standard national-security basis. Mexico and Cyprus were simultaneously added to Country Group A:6, granting both countries access to Strategic Trade Authorization (STA) exceptions for less-sensitive CCL-controlled items. The changes reflect each country's multilateral export-control regime membership and policy alignment with U.S. national security interests.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amended the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to remove Hong Kong as a separate, preferentially treated destination, effective December 23, 2020. Hong Kong is reclassified from Computer Tier 1 to Tier 3 and now subject to the same licence requirements, licence exceptions, and end-use restrictions that apply to mainland China. The rule implements Section 3 of Executive Order 13936 (July 14, 2020, "Hong Kong Normalization"), itself a response to China's imposition of the National Security Law on Hong Kong on June 30, 2020.

BIS created a new "Military End User (MEU) List" as Supplement No. 7 to EAR Part 744, adding the first tranche of 102 entities (58 in China, 45 in Russia) determined to pose an unacceptable risk of involvement in military end-uses or diversion to military end-users. The rule operationalises the pre-existing §744.21 MEU prohibition by creating a public positive list that triggers an EAR licence requirement for any item described in Supplement No. 2 to Part 744 when exported, reexported, or transferred to a listed entity in China, Russia, or Venezuela. The initial tranche is dominated by aerospace and defence companies.

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.

The Bureau of Industry and Security issued a correcting amendment to its September 11, 2020 Final Rule implementing Wassenaar Arrangement 2018 Plenary decisions, which had inadvertently introduced errors into six Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCNs) on the Commerce Control List (CCL). The correction revises memory-technology terminology in ECCN 3A001 from enumerated chip types (EEPROMs, flash, MRAMs) to the consolidated term "non-volatile memories" (with an added Technical Note), and removes a redundant "Mega Samples Per Second" label from ECCN 3A002 subparagraphs. Errors in ECCNs 3A991, 5A002, 7A005, and 9E003 are also rectified. No new export controls are introduced; the correction restores the policy intent of the parent rule and resolves ambiguities that could affect classification determinations.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amended 15 CFR Part 742 to revise the license review policy for items controlled for National Security (NS) reasons destined to the People's Republic of China, the Russian Federation, and Venezuela. The rule shifts the evaluation standard from assessing contributions to "military capabilities" to whether the export will make a "material contribution to the development, production, maintenance, repair, or operation of weapons systems" of those countries. Venezuela is added to the pre-existing China/Russia NS review framework, and BIS codifies a presumption of approval for civil end-uses and a presumption of denial for weapons-system contributions, supplemented by an illustrative list of review factors to guide license applications.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amended the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) on 9 October 2020 by removing forty (40) persons from the Unverified List (UVL) and simultaneously adding twenty-six (26) persons. The 40 removals were granted after BIS successfully completed end-use checks verifying bona fides or because the entities were no longer registered to do business in the country of listing. The 26 additions were imposed because BIS could not complete satisfactory end-use verification for reasons outside the US Government's control; entities added to the UVL must provide a signed UVL Statement before receiving items subject to the EAR, and licence exceptions are suspended for those shipments.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amended the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to establish new Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCNs) 0A977, 0D977, and 0E977 for water cannon systems designed for riot or crowd control, their software, and related technology. A Commerce Control List licence is now required for exports and reexports to most destinations worldwide, with NATO members and certain other close military allies exempt from the new requirement. The rule furthers US foreign policy interests by enabling human rights-based review of crowd-control equipment transfers globally.

BIS published an interim final rule on 5 October 2020 implementing multilateral export controls on six emerging technology categories agreed at the December 2019 Wassenaar Arrangement Plenary meeting, revising Commerce Control List ECCNs 2B001, 3D003, 3E004, 5A004, 5D001, and 9A004. The six technologies are: hybrid additive-manufacturing/CNC machine tools; computational lithography software for extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) mask fabrication; wafer-finishing technology for 5 nm-node production; digital forensics tools that circumvent device authentication to extract raw data; software for monitoring and analysis of communications acquired from a handover interface; and sub-orbital craft. As the first of two US implementing actions for the 2019 Wassenaar Plenary, this rule elevated nascent commercial technologies into permanent CCL classifications enforceable against all non-EAR99 destinations.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added 47 entities across 51 entries to the EAR Entity List effective 22 September 2020, covering entities in China, Hong Kong, Iran, Pakistan, Canada, Malaysia, Oman, Thailand, Turkey, the UAE, and the UK. All 47 entities were determined to be acting contrary to US national security or foreign policy interests. For 39 of the 47 entities BIS imposed a license requirement for all EAR-subject items with a presumption-of-denial review policy; the remaining eight face case-by-case review. The round targeted Iranian dual-use procurement networks, Chinese military-affiliated research institutes, and Pakistan-linked proliferators, reinforcing the layered export-control perimeter across multiple adversary programs simultaneously.

The Bureau of Industry and Security issued a final rule on September 11, 2020 amending the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and Commerce Control List (CCL) to implement the remaining decisions adopted at the Wassenaar Arrangement December 2018 Plenary meeting, covering 28 ECCNs revised across Categories 1–3 and 5–9 and one new ECCN (6B002) added. The rule harmonises US dual-use export controls with the 41 other WA participating states, tightening or clarifying controls on semiconductors, sensors/lasers, navigation/avionics, marine equipment, aerospace propulsion, and information-security items. An earlier May 2019 rule had already implemented five emerging-technology decisions from the same 2018 Plenary; this rule covers the residual set of decisions not addressed at that time.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amended the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) by adding sixty entities under sixty-one entries to the Entity List (Supplement No. 4 to Part 744), effective August 27, 2020. The designated entities, spanning China, Hong Kong, France, Indonesia, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, Switzerland, and the UAE, were found to be acting contrary to US national security or foreign policy interests. The rule also revised five existing entries under Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, and the UAE.

Effective 17 August 2020 (published in the Federal Register 20 August 2020, Vol. 85 No. 162, FR Doc 2020-18213), BIS implemented three simultaneous measures targeting Huawei's global supply chain. First, 38 non-U.S. affiliates of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. were added to the Entity List with the most restrictive license review policy (presumption of denial) and designated under footnote 1, extending the Huawei-specific Foreign-Produced Direct Product Rule (FDPR) to their operations. Second, the Temporary General License (TGL), which since May 2019 had authorized limited ongoing transactions with Huawei (network maintenance, software updates, standards participation), was allowed to expire on 13 August 2020 and replaced with a narrower authorization. Third, BIS expanded the scope of the Huawei FDPR (General Prohibition Three) to cover foreign-produced items when a footnote 1 entity is a party to any transaction or when the item will be used in the production or development of products for any footnote 1 entity, closing the design-house loophole that had allowed TSMC to supply HiSilicon/Kirin chips as long as Huawei was not the direct importer.