Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 90 recent

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.

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.