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

This final rule amends the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) by adding seven entities under seven entries to the Entity List. These seven entities have been determined by the U.S. Government to be acting contrary to the foreign policy or national security interests of the United States and will be listed on the Entity List under the destinations of the People's Republic of China (China), Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This final rule also modifies four existing entries on the Entity List under the destination of China.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is amending the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) by adding thirty-three (33) persons to the Unverified List (UVL). The thirty-three persons are added to the UVL on the basis that BIS was unable to verify their bona fides because an end-use check could not be completed satisfactorily for reasons outside the U.S. Government's control.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is clarifying, reorganizing, and making minor corrections to the provisions of the foreign-direct product (FDP) rules. Before this final rule, the FDP rules appeared in parts 736 and 744 of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR); now, the rules are consolidated in part 734 of the EAR. These revisions clarify the applicability of the FDP rules and make one correction applicable to the FDP rules as to the term ``U.S.- origin technology and software.''

The Department of Commerce, in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), invites the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed, and continuing information collections, which helps us assess the impact of our information collection requirements and minimize the public's reporting burden. The purpose of this notice is to allow for 60 days of public comment preceding submission of the collection to OMB.

The Department of Commerce, in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), invites the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed, and continuing information collections, which helps us assess the impact of our information collection requirements and minimize the public's reporting burden. The purpose of this notice is to allow for 60 days of public comment preceding submission of the collection to OMB.

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.

In this final rule, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amends the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) by adding twenty- seven entities to the Entity List. These twenty-seven entities have been determined by the U.S. Government to be acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States. These entities will be listed on the Entity List under the destinations of the People's Republic of China (China), Japan, Pakistan, and Singapore. This rule also revises one existing entry on the Entity List under the destination of China, adds addresses under the destination of Taiwan for a listed entity, and corrects an entry under the destination of China. In addition, this rule amends the EAR by adding one entity to the Military End-User (MEU) List under the destination of Russia.

The Department of Commerce, in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), invites the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed, and continuing information collections, which helps us assess the impact of our information collection requirements and minimize the public's reporting burden. The purpose of this notice is to allow for 60 days of public comment preceding submission of the collection to OMB.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in this notice is publishing a report that summarizes the findings of an investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce (the ``Department'') pursuant to Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as amended (``Section 232''), into the effect of imports of transformers and transformer components on the national security of the United States. This report was completed on October 15, 2020 and posted on the BIS website in July 2021. BIS has not published the appendices to the report in this notification of report findings, but they are available online at the BIS website, along with the rest of the report (see the ADDRESSES section).

This final rule amends the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) by adding four entities to the Entity List. These four entities have been determined by the U.S. Government to be acting contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States and will be listed on the Entity List under the destinations of Israel, Russia, and Singapore.