Foreign investment lawyers aren’t expecting a big change in how the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. operates under a second Trump administration, although a new round of tariffs against China and the continued easing of export restrictions among close U.S. allies could change the investment landscape and the number of filings submitted to CFIUS.
Companies using the State Department’s Defense Export Control and Compliance System should take steps to avoid two common “oversights” that Wilmarth & Associates said often cause licensing and registration delays for defense exporters.
The U.S. wants to remove more export barriers faced by the commercial space industry even after announcing a set of space-related export control reforms in October, a senior official said this week, adding that the effort could continue under the incoming Trump administration.
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The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls is starting to apply “data identification markings” to all documents attached to commodity jurisdiction and advisory opinion submissions, which will identify documents that are “SBU” (sensitive but unclassified) or as “PII” (personally identifiable information). DDTC said the change will “better manage the information being stored and transmitted within” the agency’s Defense Export Control and Compliance System (DECCS). “This will not impact requests in progress,” DDTC said. “If you receive an email from ‘Auto Classification User’, this is a notice that a document you have submitted was updated. No action is required.”
A State Department proposal to revise the definition of defense services could cover an overly broad set of activities and likely exacerbate the already lengthy processing times for commodity jurisdiction requests and export license applications, defense industry groups and firms said in public comments to the agency released last week.
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.
U.S. aerospace firm RTX tapped senior counsel Lara Covington to head the company’s compliance with the deferred prosecution agreements announced last week with DOJ and the SEC, Covington announced on LinkedIn. Covington’s official title will be the executive director of the RTX DPA Compliance Program Office, where she will help “ensure the company successfully meets its obligations” to both agencies, she wrote in her bio. RTX will pay close to $1 billion and agreed to a range of compliance commitments to resolve allegations that it committed violations of defense export control regulations, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and more (see 2410160058).
A set of new rules released last week by the Commerce and State departments will reduce licensing requirements for exports of certain space-related items to a range of U.S. trading partners and propose to transfer export control jurisdiction over other space-related defense items from the State Department to the Commerce Department, lowering trade barriers faced by the commercial space industry for years.
American defense firm RTX will pay close to $1 billion to resolve allegations that it tried to defraud the U.S. government and committed violations of defense export control regulations and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, DOJ and the SEC said Oct. 16. The company agreed to enter into two deferred prosecution agreements to settle the claims, which included Raytheon’s alleged failure to report bribes in export licensing applications and its submission of false information to the U.S. as part of multiple foreign military defense contracts.