US lawmakers target China through export, sanctions bills

A House panel moved toward advancing four measures intended to make the US Commerce Department tougher on China, including bills that would mandate more transparency about licensing decisions and give other agencies more say in which technologies and firms are restricted.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee was on track Wednesday morning to send the items targeting Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security to the House floor for votes, which are unlikely to happen until next year. 

“The system must be reformed,” committee chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said. “It lacks transparency. It is failing to protect America’s national security.”

BIS is the agency responsible for writing and enforcing US sanctions and export controls, which have become Washington’s favored tool to restrict flows of sensitive technology to China and other geopolitical rivals. The agency has come under Republican fire for perceived shortcomings in its approach to Beijing.

McCaul recently detailed those issues in a scathing 61-page report, calling for both agency reforms and tougher action against alleged violators of US export controls.

The four bills would:

• Give the Departments of Defense, State and Energy equal voting power in an export controls licensing committee that’s chaired by Commerce. The BIS representative would still be able to break a tie.
• Mandate that BIS report its licensing decisions and other export control enforcement activities to Congress every 90 days.
• Encourage BIS and the Departments of Defense and Treasury to synchronize trade restriction lists maintained by each agency, and require an explanation to Congress if one of the agencies doesn’t sanction an entity on another’s list.
• Add the protection of trade secrets to BIS’s list of responsibilities.