Bureau of Industry and Security December 2021 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Additional Protocol is an agreement between the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to allow monitoring and reporting of certain civil nuclear fuel cycle-related activities. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) administers the Additional Protocol Regulations (APR), which implement the provisions of the Additional Protocol affecting U.S. industry and other U.S. persons engaged in certain civil nuclear fuel cycle-related activities that are not regulated by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), or its domestic Agreement States, and are not situated at certain U.S. government locations. The APR describe the requirement to report such activities to BIS, as well as the conduct of on-site activities in conjunction with IAEA complementary access to locations where such civil nuclear fuel cycle-related activities take place. This rule proposes to amend the APR to replace the existing manual reporting and processing procedures with a mandatory requirement to submit reports and other documents on-line through the Additional Protocol Reporting System (APRS). As a result of this proposed change, all persons and locations in the United States that are subject to the reporting requirements in the APR would be required to register on-line to set up an APRS account, submit reports and other documents to BIS via APRS, and maintain current user account information in APRS. This rule also proposes to amend the APR to clarify and update other requirements (e.g., by removing the provisions that address the Initial Report requirements for calendar year 2008, replacing the provisions that address Amended Report requirements, and revising the definitions of certain terms used in the APR).

On December 14, 2020, the Department of Commerce published an interim final rule (the ``December 14 rule'') that revised aspects of the process for requesting exclusions from the duties and quantitative limitations on imports of aluminum and steel discussed in three previous Department of Commerce (``Commerce'') interim final rules implementing the exclusion process authorized by the President under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as amended, as well as a May 26, 2020 notice of inquiry. The December 14 rule included adding 123 General Approved Exclusions (GAEs) to the regulations. Subsequently, based on Commerce's review of the public comments received in response to the December 14 rule and additional analysis conducted by Commerce on the Section 232 exclusion request submissions, Commerce determined that a subset of the GAEs added in the December 14 rule no longer meets the criteria for inclusion as a GAE and should therefore be removed. Commerce is removing these GAEs in this interim final rule to ensure only those GAEs that meet the stated criteria from the December 14 rule will continue to be included as eligible GAEs. This interim final rule removes thirty of the GAEs that were added to the regulations in the December 14 rule, consisting of twenty-six GAEs for steel and four GAEs for aluminum. As a conforming change to a recent U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) decision, this rule also removes one additional steel GAE. Lastly, this interim final rule adds a note to both GAE supplements to address future changes to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS).

The Bureau of Industry and Security is seeking public comments on the impact that implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, through the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998 and the Chemical Weapons Convention Regulations, has had on commercial activities involving ``Schedule 1'' chemicals during calendar year 2021. The purpose of this notice of inquiry is to collect information to assist BIS in its preparation of the annual certification to the Congress on whether the legitimate commercial activities and interests of chemical, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical firms are harmed by such implementation. This certification is required under Condition 9 of Senate Resolution 75 (April 24, 1997), in which the Senate gave its advice and consent to the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention.