The State Department should scale down the International Traffic in Arms Regulations’ brokering reporting rules, which could reduce filing burdens for the defense industry and give the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls more accurate and timely information about ITAR brokering activity, industry officials said this week.
A Chinese national was arrested on Dec. 3 for allegedly conspiring to export firearms, ammunition and other military items to North Korea, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California announced. Shenghua Wen, an illegal resident of California, was charged with conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and faces a maximum of 20 years in prison.
The State Department is expecting to see a large uptick by the end of the year in the number of authorized users under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations' new AUKUS exemption, a senior agency official said.
The U.S., Australia and the U.K. signed a “landmark” agreement to use each other’s hypersonic flight testing facilities and share technical information to develop, test and evaluate hypersonic systems and technologies, the Pentagon announced this month. The agreement was signed under Pillar II of the Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) partnership, which aims to reduce trade barriers and boost collaboration among the three nations around sensitive defense technologies.
The State Department this week announced penalties on three people and two entities and their subsidiaries for illegal transfers under the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls is renewing a December change to the U.S. Munitions List that allowed U.S. manufacturers to apply for export licenses to participate in development of the KF-21 aircraft “without removing those defense articles from the USML simply because they are used in the KF-21” (see 2312010010). The revision, which was scheduled to expire Dec. 1, will now last through Dec. 1, 2026, or “when terminated by the Department, whichever occurs first,” DDTC said in a final rule released Nov. 25 and effective Nov. 26.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Export control lawyer Christopher Stagg recently launched a U.S. Munitions List revision tracker to capture updates made to USML categories within the International Traffic in Arms Regulations in recent years. The document reflects changes across all USML categories “since their revision under Export Control Reform,” Stagg said on LinkedIn, adding that he plans to update the tracker with future USML changes. Each category includes the Export Control Reform effective date, any completed regulatory changes along with their Federal Register citations, any proposed modifications and any expected future revisions.
Jessica Blum Sanchez, a former compliance specialist with the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, is joining Safran Defense & Space as its director of trade compliance, she announced on LinkedIn. She left DDTC in 2017 and most recently worked as the chief compliance officer for HDT Global.