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

The Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA, Subtitle B Part I of Pub. L. 115-232, the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for FY2019, signed 13 August 2018 by President Trump, codified at 50 U.S.C. §§ 4801–4852) provides permanent statutory authority for the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), replacing the long-lapsed Export Administration Act of 1979 and resolving a decades-long gap in which the EAR operated on emergency authority alone. ECRA is the foundational parent statute of the modern US dual-use export-control regime: it authorises the Commerce Control List, the Entity List, the Unverified List, the Military End-User (MEU) List, the Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR), the emerging-and-foundational technology control framework (§1758), and BIS enforcement and civil/criminal penalty authority — the entire regulatory toolkit under which every BIS-administered export-control action filed in the IPTM register derives its legal authority. ECRA also codified ongoing US participation in the multilateral export-control regimes (Wassenaar, NSG, MTCR, Australia Group) and created the interagency Technology Alert List process.

Germany's Außenwirtschaftsgesetz (AWG, Foreign Trade and Payments Act; BGBl. I 2013 S. 1482 of 6 June 2013, replacing the original 1961 Act) is the foundational parent statute of the modern German economic-statecraft toolkit, providing the legislative authority for (i) export licensing of dual-use goods and technology administered by BAFA under the Außenwirtschaftsverordnung (AWV) implementing regulation — the national complement to EU Dual-Use Recast Regulation 2021/821; (ii) inward FDI screening by BMWK under §§ 55–62 AWG covering non-EU/non-EFTA acquisitions of ≥ 25% of voting rights cross-sectorally and ≥ 10%/20% in 27 sensitive-sector activities including defence, semiconductors, AI, quantum, biotech, space, and critical infrastructure; and (iii) German implementation of EU-level and autonomous trade and sanctions restrictions. As the EU's largest economy and a top-tier dual-use exporter, Germany's AWG-based regime is structurally peer-foundational to JP FEFTA 1949, UK NSI Act 2021, US ECRA 2018, CN Export Control Law 2020, and NL Wet Vifo 2022 in the G7+CN economic- statecraft parent-statute cluster.