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

From 1 January 2021, the end of the EU exit transition period, the UK introduced a standalone import licensing requirement — the Nuclear Materials Import Licence (NMIL) — for "relevant" nuclear materials entering the UK, administered at the time by the Office for Nuclear Regulation under an Open General Import Licence framework and published via GOV.UK guidance on 31 December 2020. Coverage spans tariff heading 2612 (uranium ore and concentrates) and 2844 (plutonium, uranium-233, enriched uranium, natural uranium and related compounds/alloys, including spent or irradiated fuel elements). The requirement replaced the free-circulation treatment nuclear material imports from EU member states previously had inside the single market.

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.

Venezuela's Constitutional Anti-Blockade Law, adopted by the National Constituent Assembly on 8 October 2020 and published in Gaceta Oficial Extraordinaria N° 6.583 on 12 October 2020, establishes a "special and temporary" horizontal legal framework empowering the Executive Branch to suspend or derogate any law of the Republic when necessary to counteract the effects of unilateral coercive measures imposed against Venezuela (Article 19 — the broadest sanctions- countermeasure derogation authority in the Western Hemisphere). The law also creates the Centro Internacional de Inversión Productiva (CIIP), a special-jurisdiction FDI vehicle empowered to negotiate confidentially with foreign investors, conduct asset-protection mechanisms, and operate entirely outside ordinary public-procurement, accounting, and FX-control law. Constitutes the foundational parent statute for the VE counter-sanctions legal corpus and closes the VE=0 gap on the action register.

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.

MOFCOM Order No. 4 of 2020, issued and effective 19 September 2020, establishes the Unreliable Entity List (UEL / 不可靠实体清单) regime — China's primary countermeasure framework for designating foreign companies, organisations, and individuals that are deemed to endanger Chinese national sovereignty, security, or development interests, or that apply discriminatory measures against Chinese entities in violation of normal market principles. The UEL inter-ministerial Working Mechanism, administered through MOFCOM, may impose restrictions or prohibitions on the designated entity's China-related import/export activities, investment in China, and entry or stay of senior personnel in China, as well as fines. Promulgated under the Foreign Trade Law of the PRC and the National Security Law of the PRC, the Provisions serve as the statutory parent for every UEL designation announcement since 2023, and operate as the structural peer of the US BIS Entity List / OFAC SDN architecture and the simultaneously promulgated Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law framework.

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).