Companies should expect Trump administration to take an increasingly aggressive stance on China-related inbound and outbound investment restrictions, especially because of the makeup of President Donald Trump’s team and key Cabinet officials, a former Treasury Department official and trade consultant said.

U.S. export controls are increasingly trending toward unilateral, extraterritorial restrictions as opposed to multilateral ones, and that could continue under the administration of President Donald Trump, said Jeannette Chu, vice president for national security policy at the National Foreign Trade Council.

Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., urged the Commerce Department Feb. 3 to strengthen export controls following the recent “breakthrough development” of an advanced artificial intelligence model by Chinese startup DeepSeek.

The European Commission last week published a first-of-its-kind report on dual-use export control licensing patterns that it says will give companies, governments and the public a “better understanding of how export controls are applied” within the bloc.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash the federal workforce are unlikely to target the Bureau of Industry and Security, which is already dealing with employee shortages as it carries out U.S. export control policy, a former senior BIS official said.

European Parliament members this week probed the EU’s new trade commissioner about how he’s handling President Donald Trump’s tariff threats, with some members calling on the EU to prepare for retaliation.

The leaders of the House Select Committee on China urged the Trump administration Jan. 30 to tighten export controls on computing chips that could enable China’s development of artificial intelligence.

The new artificial intelligence export control framework introduced by the U.S. earlier this month could create diplomatic issues with Europe and force some European nations to diversify away from U.S. chips, a former U.S. official and a European policy researcher said this week.

The U.S. should prevent China from obtaining American technology it can use to advance its artificial intelligence capabilities, Commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick said Jan. 29.

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