The Chairs of the House China and Education Committees raised concerns that decades of federally funded research has benefited the defense and security establishments of the PRC.
Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has issued another resource to familiarize small business owners with beneficial ownership reporting requirements. This law requires many small businesses to report basic information to the Federal government about the real people who ultimately own or control them.
A senate subcommittee released a majority staff report detailing its inquiry into the prevalence of American-manufactured microchips in Russian weapons systems. "Our findings reveal a distinct disinterest in evaluating and improving corporate compliance practices and particularly, monitoring those distributors, the middlemen, the ones who may actually make the sales to companies that sell to Russia." said the Committee Chair in his opening remarks.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report highlights the substantial investments China is making through the world’s largest infrastructure finance program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Contributors to the report identified challenges to US competitiveness includeing the "lack of a public national strategy to guide and prioritize" U.S. efforts and the "fragmentation of foreign assistance efforts" across several federal agencies.
Majority staff from the Homeland Security and Select China Committees released a report recapping their efforts to draw attention to the role of Chinese suppliers in U.S. Port Security. China's Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. (ZPMC), the world’s largest STS crane manufacturer is an entity of particular focus of the report. Producing nearly 80% of the STS cranes used at U.S. ports ZPMC commands 70% of the global market share.
Additionally, OFAC put on public inspection Interim Final Rule to Extend Recordkeeping Requirements from Five to 10 Years, consistent with the extension of the statute of limitations for violations of certain sanctions administered by OFAC. OFAC also put on public inspection a Comment Request for Reporting, Procedures and Penalties Regulations and Other Information Collections Maintained by OFAC for comments concerning OFAC's information requirements.
The Georgia Institute of Technology announced it is shuttering its Shenzhen campus and closing a chapter of educational cooperation in the “China’s Silicon Valley” dating back to 1984. To date, Tianjin University remains on the Entity List, making Georgia Tech’s participation with Tianjin University, and subsequently GTSI, no longer tenable" the Iniversity said in a statement.
BIS released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking outlining a new mandatory reporting requirement for the world’s leading AI developers and cloud providers. The proposed rule requires developers of the most powerful AI models and computing clusters to provide detailed reporting to the federal government. This includes reporting about developmental activities, cybersecurity measures, and outcomes from red-teaming efforts, which involve testing for dangerous capabilities like the ability to assist in cyberattacks or lower the barriers to entry for non-experts to develop chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.
Evidently the "strong concerns with Canada’s unilateral digital service tax" the USTR cited in the readout of last weeks meeting between Ambassador Katherine Tai and Minister of Export Promotion, International Trade, and Economic Development, Mary Ng. Involved a preview of a USMCA dispute settlement complaint. Friday Tai announced that the United States has requested dispute settlement consultations with Canada under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) regarding Canada’s recently enacted digital service tax (DST).
Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued two rules to help safeguard the residential real estate and investment adviser sectors from illicit finance. The investment adviser rule is slated to go into effect in January 2026. Its residential real-estate rule is scheduled to begin in December 2025.
Congressional China hawks have called for U.S. Department of Defense to immediately place Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL) on the Section 1260H List, which provides transparency on Chinese military companies operating in the United States. Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin urging the move, stating "By including CATL on the Section 1260H List, the DoD would not only safeguard America’s military infrastructure from exposure to the PLA, it would also send a powerful signal to U.S. companies who are currently weighing partnerships with CATL.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is considering updating its sanctions-related provisions and contract clauses for assistance and acquisition awards. A primary factor under review is whether to expand reporting requirements to enhance USAID's monitoring of recipients' and contractors' activities involving sanctioned jurisdictions or sanctioned individuals and entities subject to the sanctions programs administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The Commerce Department Friday announced its list of critical sectors and key goods for potential cooperation under the IPEF Supply Chain Agreement to strengthen supply chain resiliency. Under the IPEF Supply Chain Agreement, each Party committed to developing a list of “critical sectors” and “key goods” for cooperation under the Agreement, to be shared through the Council. These lists are intended to be iterative and change as needed over time.
House lawmakers are raising questions about US biopharmaceutical companies that are conducting clinical trials with China’s People’s Liberation Army and in the Xinjiang region where Beijing is accused of mistreating members of the Uyghur community. Chinese biopharmaceutical companies, with their ability to harness China’s large population of patients to conduct time- and cost-efficient clinical trials play a vital role in the global pharmaceutical industry. The lawmakers want the Food and Drug Administration to provide information about these practices.
Vice President Kamala Harris may now be the Democratic nominee for President, but the party platform approved by Democrats at their convention in Chicago still reflects the positions of President Biden, including on trade and international economic policy. During her tenure as vice president, trade policy has not been a key part of Ms. Harris’ portfolio. In recent remarks since becoming the presumptive nominee, she has sharply criticized former President Trump’s across-the-board tariffs proposal, calling it a tax on US consumers and indicated that she will hold to the Biden Administration’s vision of a “worker-centric” trade policy.
The State Department announced Thursday that the United States, United Kingdom and Australia have removed barriers to defense trade as part of their trilateral partnership. State advised Congress that the Australia and United Kingdom export control systems are comparable to those of the United States and have implemented a reciprocal export exemption for US entities.
In an In Focus report on regulation of US outbound investment in China released yesterday, CRS notes that Congressional approaches to a US outbound investment regime differ with regard to relevant countries, sectors and activity to be covered.
The US Development Finance Corporation is funding projects that benefit countries whose intellectual property and data policies harm US commercial interests and jobs, according to a new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
New legislation aimed at boosting US steel production proposes imposing tariffs on imports of carbon-intensive steel. Introduced in Johnstown, PA by California Rep. Ro Khanna, the Modern Steel Act, introduced by a group of House Democrats, would offer funding and incentives for the construction of new facilities producing near-zero emissions iron and/or steel, using cutting edge technologies like hydrogen direct reduction.
The leaders of the House Select Committee on China are calling on the Commerce Department to investigate the threat posed by Chinese wi-fi routers made by TP-Link Technologies. The company is subject to draconian national security laws in China and can be forced to hand over sensitive US information by Chinese intelligence officials, committee chairman John Moolenaar (R-Mich) and ranking Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill) wrote in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.