Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

The U.S. Department of Commerce published a final rule establishing the Aluminum Import Monitoring and Analysis (AIM) system (19 CFR part 361), modelled on the pre-existing steel monitoring system. Importers, customs brokers, or their agents must obtain an online AIM import license for every entry of covered aluminum products, disclosing the countries where the primary aluminum used was smelted and where the product was most recently cast. The rule was announced 23 December 2020; after a stay and delay of the compliance date, it took full effect 28 June 2021, from which point a license became mandatory for all covered aluminum imports.

BIS issued a final rule (FR Doc 2020-25453) amending and clarifying Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to implement the export enforcement provisions of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA). The rule replaces legacy references to the Export Administration Act of 1979 (EAA) throughout the EAR with citations to ECRA and other applicable statutes, and formally expands BIS investigative authority to conduct pre-license checks, post-shipment verifications, and enforcement investigations both within and outside the United States. Additional amendments address license issuance procedures, denial orders, and civil penalty payment processes.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amended the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to revise the licensing review policy for items controlled for Crime Control (CC) reasons, explicitly embedding human rights considerations into the review calculus. License applications for CC-controlled items — including stun guns, less-lethal ammunition, restraints, and biometric equipment such as fingerprint analyzers, polygraphs, and voice-stress devices — will be assessed case-by-case, with presumption of denial when the destination country or region exhibits civil disorder or when there is a risk items will be used to violate or abuse human rights (through censorship, surveillance, detention, or excessive force). The rule also extended human rights review as a factor to nearly all other EAR license applications, not only CC-flagged items.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) establishes procedures under 15 C.F.R. Part 764, Supplement No. 2, for submitting classified national security information ex parte and in camera to courts reviewing enforcement actions taken under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Implementing the judicial-review provision of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA § 1702(d)(4)), the rule enables BIS to present classified evidence to a reviewing court without public disclosure, protecting sensitive intelligence sources and methods while preserving respondents' due-process rights. The rule applies to any EAR enforcement action subject to judicial review and was effective upon publication.

OFAC amended the Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR Part 544) to add a note explaining that SDN List entries for persons designated for North Korea-related WMD activities will carry a "Secondary sanctions risk:" prefix, alerting counterparties to the elevated secondary-sanctions exposure under applicable authority. In the same rulemaking, OFAC amended the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR Part 560) to broaden the general licence for official UN business — extending it to UN Specialized Agencies, Programmes, Funds, and Related Organizations — and to rename "World Bank" to "World Bank Group" throughout. A technical correction was also included. Neither change expands the substantive prohibitions; both are administrative clarifications improving SDN transparency and GL precision.

OFAC published an interim final rule on September 3, 2020 (85 FR 54909; FR_DOC 2020-19237) adjusting civil monetary penalty (CMP) ceiling amounts for recordkeeping and reporting violations under 31 CFR Part 501, effective October 5, 2020. The adjustment is a catch-up correction: recordkeeping/reporting CMPs were inadvertently omitted from the August 1, 2016 initial catch-up adjustment mandated by the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015 (Pub. L. 114-74 § 701). The rule raises the late-filing penalty from $5,000 to $5,942 (per occurrence), the blocked-assets late-filing recurring penalty from $1,000 to $1,189 (per 30-day period), and the failure-to-maintain-records maximum from $50,000 to $59,522.

Effective 17 August 2020 (published Federal Register 20 August 2020, Vol. 85 No. 162, FR Doc 2020-17908), BIS issued a final rule clarifying that Entity List license requirements under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) apply to listed entities regardless of their role in a transaction — as purchaser, intermediate consignee, ultimate consignee, or end-user. Prior regulatory text had been read as applying license requirements only when a listed entity was the ultimate consignee or end-user; this rule amends 15 CFR §§ 744.11 and 744.16 and the introductory text of Supplement No. 4 to Part 744 to close that gap. The clarification is substantively a housekeeping rule (no new entities are listed or delisted), but it removes an exploitable interpretive loophole in Entity List enforcement and was published the same day as the major Huawei affiliate expansion (FR Doc 2020-18213).