President Trump issued an executive order on October 16 implementing the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 while waiving its tariff provisions and numerous sanctions and restrictions.
The diesel agreement puts the administration’s drive to lower fuel prices before the midterms at odds with Congress’s effort to deny Moscow revenue for its war against Ukraine and Britain’s commitment to maintaining sanctions pressure.
The licenses avert an immediate operational shutdown but leave the ICC under sustained U.S. leverage. Routine subscriptions, telecommunications and enterprise software may continue—some indefinitely, others only through April 7, 2027—but vendors must still screen separately sanctioned officials and may withdraw services voluntarily.
The directive signals that trade-fraud and qui tam matters may no longer remain discrete civil investigations. Allegations involving unpaid duties, false origin claims, undervaluation, misclassification or forced labor may prompt parallel criminal, tax, securities and asset-forfeiture inquiries. Importers and other supply-chain participants should investigate credible allegations promptly, preserve evidence and assess disclosure options before DOJ independently identifies the conduct.
The Treasury Department has sanctioned the Russia-linked A7 Network as a significant transnational criminal organization while FinCEN is proposing to bar U.S. financial institutions from transmitting funds involving A7's overseas sub-agents, escalating a U.S.-UK effort against an alternative payment system built to keep Russian foreign trade moving under Western sanctions.
A California technology executive was arrested October 1 on charges that he helped smuggle more than $300 million in export-controlled computer servers to China through intermediaries in Malaysia and Singapore.
Commerce is reportedly delaying aircraft-parts licensing for China, using access to U.S. aviation supplies as leverage in trade negotiations. Slower approvals and limits on quantities licensed raise delivery risks in a market that bought $15.9 billion in U.S. civilian aircraft, engines, equipment and parts in 2025.
The White House’s denial that it is preparing a diesel export ban leaves the proposal a political demand rather than an announced policy. An embargo could briefly lower prices near Gulf Coast refineries but offer limited relief at the pump: reduced refinery output could raise gasoline and jet-fuel costs, while import-dependent West Coast markets face higher international prices.
The measure would sanction Russian officials, financial institutions, energy projects, and vessels associated with sanctions evasion. It also would direct the president to impose additional tariffs of up to 100 percent on goods from countries that continue qualifying purchases of Russian crude oil or natural gas and rank among the five largest importers by volume during the 12 months preceding enactment.
In the waning days of Summer, we sat down with Nazak Nikakhtar, former Commerce Department official and current Chair of Wiley Rein's National Security Practice to hear her thoughts on ECRA, the Entity List, BIS-ITA interplay, and navigating a career in private practice and public service.
The federal agency charged with helping protect civilian networks and critical infrastructure is reducing services and operating with a depleted workforce as adversaries increasingly use artificial intelligence to find weaknesses in essential systems.
The Bureau of Industry and Security has published its fiscal year 2025 annual report to Congress after apparently skipping a public report for fiscal 2024—returning with a markedly shorter, more political and less statistically coherent account of its performance.
When faculty disclosures, conflict-of-interest records, sponsored-research systems and export-control processes remain siloed, undisclosed foreign ties can create exposure under grant rules, agency-specific restrictions and the False Claims Act—even when the relevant information already exists somewhere within the university.
The action creates both immediate compliance duties and broader prospective risk. Companies must rescreen counterparties and vessels, identify entities covered by OFAC’s 50% Rule, and wind down transactions relying on suspended remittance, educational and exchange authorizations by Sept. 8. At the same time, the addition of aviation, digital assets, gold, shipping and technology under Executive Order 13902 gives Treasury wider authority to sanction non-U.S. businesses supporting those sectors of Iran’s economy.
The White House’s “Great Transshipment Scam” report casts lawful sourcing shifts and trade involving Chinese inputs as potential customs fraud. Deborah Elms argues that this expansive definition could criminalize legitimate commerce, raise costs and drive further supply-chain disruption—much of it prompted by Washington’s own uneven tariffs.
The settlement is one of the State Department’s larger recent civil export-enforcement actions, with regulators describing BAE’s violations as systemic and requiring three years of independent oversight and compliance reforms.
The Trump administration’s 2026 regulatory agenda signals a targeted expansion of U.S. trade and economic-security controls, led by the suspension of duty-free de minimis treatment, a replacement framework for artificial-intelligence export controls, new restrictions on critical technologies and military end users, statutory outbound-investment screening, and significant ITAR revisions.
The licensing delays deepen questions about whether BIS has the capacity to administer Washington’s expanding export-control system.
The Senate vote marks the most significant expansion of U.S. statutory sanctions against Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has empowered its courts to cancel certain foreign investors’ rights to buy back businesses and other assets sold after the invasion of Ukraine.