Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2665 actions· ✨ 90 recent

BIS published a two-part final rule amending the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) for cameras, systems, and related components, effective March 8, 2024. Part one creates new ECCN 6A293 controlling ultra-high-speed cameras (minimum exposure time ≤1 microsecond AND throughput ≥13.43 Giga-pixels per second at 205,000 fps) for nuclear nonproliferation (NP) reasons with no License Exception STA eligibility, capturing instruments used in weapons-test diagnostics not previously covered by 6A003 or 6A203. Part two lifts military-end-user (MEU) restrictions on ECCNs 0A504, 6A002, 6A003, 6A993.a, and 8A002.d for Country Group A:1 destinations (32 closest US allies including EU member states, Canada, Japan, Australia, UK, and South Korea), aligning controls with commercial availability and established allied strategic relationships.

The Bureau of Industry and Security added 36 entities — 35 in China, 1 in Japan — to the Entity List under a presumption of denial for all EAR-controlled items, effective December 16, 2022. The most consequential additions are Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC, simultaneously removed from the Unverified List), eight Cambricon AI-chip subsidiaries, and Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE), China's sole domestic lithography producer. Three existing entries were revised: CETC 13 and two affiliates gained a Footnote 3 Russian-military-end-user designation, bringing them under the Russia/Belarus Foreign Direct Product rule with a blanket denial policy.

Effective 24 February 2022 — the date of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine — the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) published an interim final rule (87 FR 12226, FR Doc 2022-04300) adding sweeping new export license requirements under a new § 746.8 of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). The rule requires a licence for any item in CCL Categories 3–9 (electronics, computers, telecommunications, sensors, lasers, navigation/avionics, marine, aerospace, propulsion) exported, reexported, or transferred to Russia, with a review policy of denial. Two new Russia-specific Foreign Direct Product (FDP) rules extend US jurisdiction to foreign-manufactured goods: the Russia FDP Rule (§ 734.9(f)) covers all foreign-made items using US technology/equipment destined for Russia, and the Russia-MEU FDP Rule (§ 734.9(g)) covers items destined to 47 designated military-end-user (MEU) entities with no licence exceptions available. All three restrictions carry a presumption of denial, making this the most sweeping peacetime expansion of the EAR since its modern codification.

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.