Congress should consider creating a single export licensing system to strengthen export controls on China, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in its annual report to Congress released last week. In its report, the commission urged Congress to consider a number of steps to make it more difficult for China to evade US controls. First, the report recommends that Congress hold hearings to evaluate the potential for establishing a single export licensing system.

Assistant Secretary Matthew Axelrod of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security and Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security …

The House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, sent a letter to the United States Trade Representative, Ambassador Katherine Tai, …

The Justice Department prepared an Opinion Procedure Release for an unnamed U.S. company permitting payments to foreign officials despite potential conflict with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act's anti-bribery provisions.

President Biden has continued for one year the investment restrictions placed on Chinese securities associated with the PRC's Civil-Military Fusion (CMF) industrial policy. The restrictions include tradeing is securities of Chinese firms in the defense sector, as well as entities deemed controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) are issuing a new SAR key term to support financial institutions in reporting potential efforts to evade U.S. export controls beyond the Russia-related circumstances that were the focus of prior alerts.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has been heralded as a way to disrupt the workforce–to the chagrin of many human workers. Tesla CEO Elon Musk was hopeful about the future of AI in a meeting this week with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has introduced legislation calling on the Biden administration to impose sanctions on 49 top Hong Kong justice officials and judges for whittling away basic rights.  The Hong Kong Sanctions Act requires the president to determine whether certain Hong Kong officials violated human rights and sanctions should be imposed in accordance with the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, or the Hong Kong Autonomy Act.  

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore) praised the Commerce Department for putting in place new policies to prevent the promotion of US surveillance technology to foreign governments in response to his request earlier this year. “For the first time the Department is making clear that the United States will not help companies find foreign markets for products or services that undermine democracy or enable repressive surveillance and discrimination," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) applauding the change.

Congressional China hawks sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo Thursday, calling for the Department  to regulate the open-source collaboration model employed in modern advanced semiconductor design.   Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), along with Sen. Marco Rubio and fourteen other lawmakers call for the Commerce Department to “build a robust ecosystem for open-source collaboration among the U.S. and our allies while ensuring the PRC is unable to benefit from that work.”

Representative Chris Smtih (R-NJ) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) of the bicameral Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) sent letters Oct. 31 inquiring about Costco and ADI's selling of banned products with ties to China.

Congressional-Executive Commission on China Chair Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and co-chair Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore) are calling on the Administration to impose export controls on technology used by China to collect biometric data in Tibet. The request follows a prior letter by CECC Commissioners to the CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific that expressed concerns that Thermo Fisher products were used for mass biometric data collection and surveillance that “could enable further gross violations” of the human rights of Tibetans.

US and European Union officials met Oct. 24 to discuss insurance issues at a session of the Joint Committee established under the US-EU Agreement on Prudential Measures Regarding Insurance and Reinsurance. The agreement addresses three areas of prudential insurance oversight: (1) reinsurance; (2) group supervision and (3) the exchange of insurance information between supervisors.

The Commerce Department announced Oct. 24 it will begin a review of Vietnam’s non-market economy status. The review comes at the request of Vietnam. On September 8, government of Vietnam filed an official request that Commerce consider it a market economy citing the country’s economic reforms made in recent years.

The bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) held a hearing last week on forced labor in China’s seafood industry and how seafood caught and processed with forced labor ends up in the U.S. supply chains. The CECC’s Chairs, Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) were joined at the hearing by Commissioner Thea Lee, the Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs at the Department of Labor.  In his opening statement Mr. Smith cited the work of The Outlaw Ocean Project whose reporting exposed a “disconcerting pattern of People’s Republic of China (PRC) based companies exploiting the forced labor of Uyghurs and North Koreans to process substantial quantities of seafood destined for the U.S. market.

The United States has asked Mexico to review whether workers at Tecnología Modificada S.A. de C.V., in Nuevo Laredo, a subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc., are being denied the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining.  The facility produces remanufactured automotive parts.   The request, made in response to a petition, marks the sixteenth time the United States has formally invoked the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism (RRM) in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

Rep. Mike Gallagher aimed his lance at the Ivory Tower, in a speech Monday to the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Universities, urging the leaders to share his appreciation of the Chinese threat. Mr. Gallagher decried university administrators' perceived indifference to CCP surveillance and intimidation, an ill-regulated flow of expertise overseas, and the role of US Capital in accelerating Chinese military innovation.

The leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party are expanding their investigation into US venture capital firms investing in China’s high technology by launching an inquiry into Sequoia Capital and Sequoia Capital China. Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc) and ranking Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill) are seeking information about Sequoia's investments into PRC artificial intelligence, semiconductor and quantum computing companies, as well as the announced split.

The Administration is being slow in carrying out enforcement activities to prevent goods made with forced labor from entering the US market, Congressional lawmakers and witnesses at a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing. Customs and Border Protection needs to take a more proactive approach to enforcing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, Homeland Security oversight, accountability and enforcement subcommittee Chairman Dan Bishop (R-NC) commented.

Meetings: Information Systems Technical Advisory Committee Nov 1st 9AM Sensors and Instrumentation Technical Advisory Committee Oct 31, 1PM Emerging Technology Technical Advisory Committee Nov 8 and 9, at 9AM Materials and Equipment Technical Advisory Committee Nov. 16, 10:00 AM Transportation and Related Equipment Technical Advisory Committee, November 15,, 9:30 AM.,