Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced the adoption of a final rule modernizing the Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) system. Commerce also announced plans to unveil a new online platform for SIMA on Commerce’s website in October. “These significant improvements to SIMA will enable Commerce and the public to more readily identify transshipment and circumvention involving steel...

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in the Department of Commerce (Commerce) added 24 Chinese companies to the Entity List for their role in helping the Chinese military construct and militarize the internationally condemned artificial islands in the South China Sea. Despite protests from the United States and other countries, the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been...

Today, the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) released their Congressionally directed study, “Space Traffic Management: Assessment of the Feasibility, Expected Effectiveness, and Funding Implications of a Transfer of Space Traffic Management Functions.” The findings reaffirm that the Office of Space Commerce at the Department of Commerce is the best suited civil agency to perform...

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in the Department of Commerce (Commerce) today further restricted access by Huawei Technologies (Huawei) and its non-U.S. affiliates on the Entity List to items produced domestically and abroad from U.S. technology and software. In addition, BIS added another 38 Huawei affiliates to the Entity List, which imposes a license requirement for all items subject...

The U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Commission have initiated discussions to evaluate the potential for an enhanced EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework to comply with the July 16 judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Schrems II case. This judgment declared that this framework is no longer a valid mechanism to transfer personal data from the European Union to the...

Today, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) filed a petition for rulemaking with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on behalf of U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross seeking to clarify regulations related to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The petition was filed in response to the May 2020 Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship...

The Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added to the Entity List 11 Chinese companies implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, involuntary collection of biometric data, and genetic analyses targeted at Muslim minority groups from the...

Today, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross issued the following statement on the July 16 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Schrems II case. “While the Department of Commerce is deeply disappointed that the court appears to have invalidated the European Commission’s adequacy decision underlying the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, we are still studying the decision to fully...