Department of Commerce Required to Annually Report Export Licensing Information to Congress Related to Listed Entities

Key Points

• The Export Control Reform Act has been amended to require the Bureau of Industry and Security to provide Congressional committees with annual reports related to end-use checks and specific license applications involving the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List and Military End User List.
• The new law does not require any amendments to the Export Administration Regulations or impose any licensing or other requirements on exporters.
• The new law does not give Congress the authority to review information they could not already have requested under existing authorities. Rather, it requires BIS to provide certain information annually without being requested to do so.

President Trump signed into law a bill requiring the Secretary of Commerce to report annually on certain export license applications, related authorization requests and end-use checks to the House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs (HFAC) and the Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. The bill—Maintaining American Superiority by Improving Export Control Transparency Act—amends the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA) of 2018 to mandate the Secretary to report on license applications or other requests for authorization for the export, reexport, release and in-country transfer of items, and related end-use checks, for items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to parties on the Entity List or Military End-User (MEU) List, maintained by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), in countries subject to U.S. arms embargoes, such as China.

ECRA already requires this type of information, as well as any other export license related information, to be provided upon request of the chair or ranking member of congressional committees or subcommittees of appropriate jurisdiction.

The bill amends Section 1756 of the ECRA (50 U.S.C. § 4815), which is the licensing section. For each covered license application, the report must include a description of the:

• name of the entity submitting the application;
• item and its ECCN;
• name of the end user and the end user’s location;
• value of the exports;
• decision with respect to the license application or other authorization; and
• date of submission.

The report must also include:

• the date, location and result of any end-use checks; and
• aggregate statistics on all covered license applications and other requests for authorizations.

Except for the aggregate statistics, the required information will be exempt from public disclosure under ECRA’s confidentiality provision (50 U.S.C. § 4820(h)(2)). That confidentiality provision provides that the information may not be disclosed, unless the full committee determines that the withholding of that information is “contrary to the national interest.” The bill also authorizes the exclusion of information that may jeopardize an ongoing investigation.

This law is only a reporting requirement, subject to the availability of appropriations, and does not mandate any change to scope of controls or license review policy. The detailed licensing information provided to the committees could, however, become the basis for increased scrutiny of BIS’ licensing activity (including congressional hearings), congressional requests to companies or legislation regarding the scope of controls, parties to be added to the Entity or MEU lists, or requests for revocation of licenses.