Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 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 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.

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.

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 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 US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) amended the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR) to exclude entities and sub-entities identified on the Cuba Restricted List from three remittance general licences: §515.570 (outbound remittances), §515.572(a)(3) (remittance forwarding services), and §515.587 (other authorised remittances). The rule additionally amended the ordinarily-incident provision §515.421 to confirm that transactions routed through Cuba Restricted List entities are not covered even where the underlying licence does not expressly exclude them. The effective date was 30 days after Federal Register publication, on 26 November 2020.

BIS published a temporary final rule (FR Doc 2020-22608) establishing a certification procedure under which US importers holding contracts for certain Brazilian steel articles signed before Presidential Proclamation 10064 (28 August 2020) could apply for relief from the absolute quantitative limitation imposed by that proclamation. Eligible parties must certify that the contract was executed before 28 August 2020, specifies delivery before 31 December 2020, and that domestic procurement is infeasible. The relief mechanism lapsed at year-end 2020.

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.

On 8 October 2020, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) determined that section 1(a)(i) of Executive Order 13902 (10 January 2020) applies to the financial sector of the Iranian economy, exposing non-US persons that operate in or knowingly facilitate significant transactions with that sector to secondary sanctions. Concurrently, OFAC designated eighteen Iranian banks (sixteen under E.O. 13902, one as an owned-or-controlled affiliate, and Hekmat Iranian Bank under E.O. 13382 non-proliferation authority). After a 45-day wind-down, the secondary-sanctions exposure became effective on 22 November 2020. The determination was formally republished in the Federal Register on 1 October 2025 (FR Doc 2025-19123) under Trump 2.0's maximum-pressure restoration; the underlying economic measure dates to the 2020 action.

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.

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 U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published the International Criminal Court-Related Sanctions Regulations as an interim final rule effective 1 October 2020, codifying into 31 CFR Part 520 the IEEPA-based asset-blocking authorities delegated by President Trump's Executive Order 13928 of 11 June 2020. The regulations authorised OFAC to block the property and property interests of persons determined to have materially assisted, sponsored, or supported ICC efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any U.S. or allied-nation personnel without consent. No individual designations were made under 31 CFR Part 520 before the programme was terminated by President Biden's EO 14022 in April 2021 and OFAC struck the part from the CFR effective 6 July 2021.

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.

The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) amended the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (31 CFR Part 515) effective 24 September 2020 to further deny the Cuban regime revenue. The rule added a new prohibition on lodging at any property on the State Department's Cuba Prohibited Accommodations List (PAL) and removed the general licence permitting travellers to import Cuban-origin alcohol and tobacco products as accompanied baggage. It also narrowed the professional meetings and conferences general licence (515.564) and the public performances, clinics, workshops, competitions, and exhibitions general licence (515.575) to exclude Cuba-related activities, closing gaps exploited under earlier travel-authorisation categories.

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.

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.

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 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).

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.

The US Department of Commerce preliminarily determined that producers and exporters of silicon metal from Kazakhstan received countervailable subsidies at a 120.00% economy-wide rate, and instructed US Customs and Border Protection to begin collecting cash deposits from importers at that rate. The countervailing-duty investigation was initiated 2020-07-27 following a June 2020 petition by Globe Specialty Metals, Inc. and Mississippi Silicon LLC, the same domestic petitioners behind the concurrent antidumping cases against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, and Malaysia. 2019 Kazakh silicon metal imports subject to the case were valued at approximately $14.9 million.

The US Department of Commerce preliminarily determined that silicon metal from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iceland is being sold in the United States at less than fair value, and instructed US Customs and Border Protection to begin collecting cash deposits from importers. Bosnia and Herzegovina's sole respondent, R-S Silicon d.o.o., and the all-others rate were set at 21.41%; Iceland's sole respondent, PCC Bakki Silicon hf, received 47.54%, with the all-others rate at 37.83%. A concurrent antidumping investigation of silicon metal from Malaysia, initiated on the same 2020-07-27 date, was not part of this preliminary determination and remained pending. The case followed a July 2020 petition by Globe Specialty Metals, Inc. and Mississippi Silicon LLC.