Maros Sefcovic of Slovakia, the EU’s candidate for trade and economic security commissioner, said this week he would “double down” on defending European industry against “increasingly widespread” unfair practices.

A Texas-headquartered offshore drilling company is filing a voluntary disclosure with the Office of Foreign Assets Control after its former Russian subsidiary may have breached U.S. sanctions, according to corporate filings.

The Treasury Department is moving forward with a rule that will add 59 military bases across 30 states to the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. and increase the scope of transactions CFIUS can examine for land purchases near eight other military bases (see 2407090003). The rule, released this month in prepublication form, includes multiple bases that lawmakers for months have urged Treasury to add to its purview, including two near planned Chinese lithium battery and electric vehicle plants.

Banks that choose not to follow a set of export compliance best practices recently issued by the Bureau of Industry and Security may be leaving themselves “wide open” to possible penalties under U.S. export regulations, a senior BIS official said, especially if they don’t have other compliance safeguards in place.

The Bureau of Industry and Security fined multinational chip maker GlobalFoundries $500,000 after it illegally exported semiconductor wafers to a Entity Listed firm with ties to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), China’s flagship chip manufacturing company.

U.S. export control efforts -- along with enforcement risks for companies -- will continue to rise no matter who wins the upcoming presidential election, said Matthew Axelrod, the lead export enforcement official at the Bureau of Industry and Security.

A new proposed rule from the Census Bureau could change how the agency regulates in-transit shipments that travel through the U.S. from foreign countries before being exported to another foreign destination.

The Bureau of Industry and Security is imposing export controls on nine “key” precursors that Russia has used in chemical weapons against Ukraine, the agency said in a final rule that becomes effective Nov. 1. The rule also updates certain language in BIS regulations that it said will reduce the “licensing burden” for certain government entities located in Russia and Belarus, and it clarifies the scope of the agency's foreign direct product rules.

The U.S. this week unveiled new trade and financial restrictions against people and companies across more than 17 countries for helping Russia evade sanctions or for supporting the country’s military, adding nearly 400 to the Treasury Department’s sanctions list and more than 40 to the Commerce Department’s Entity List. Another move by Commerce will tighten existing controls on nearly 50 entities that it said are procuring U.S.-branded microelectronics for Russia.

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