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Administration moving forward to ease export controls
The Obama administration on Monday released a major new component of its push to ease export restrictions on military and dual-use goods.
The export control reform initiative is highly technical but forms a part of Obama’s push to create jobs in the absence of cooperation from Congress. Eased controls should allow more outbound trade and thereby expand U.S. employment.
U.S. exporters have long complained of the overly complex and poorly coordinated U.S. export control system, which is overseen by the departments of Commerce, State, Treasury, Energy and Defense.
As part of the reform, the Obama administration is moving items off the restrictive State Department-controlled International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) list and onto a more lax Commerce Control List (CCL) controlled by the Department of Commerce.
To facilitate that, the administration is rewriting ITAR, and on Monday it released a new draft list of military aircraft and components.
The draft list is the second part of ITAR to be revised since Obama launched the export control reform in 2010. The section on land vehicles has already been re-written. A section on space vehicles is expected soon.
Overall the administration has proposed collapsing the various export control agencies into a single agency with a single list, but doing this would require the cooperation of Congress. A key obstacle to overcome would be deciding which congressional committee — Senate Banking or Senate Foreign Relations — would retain jurisdiction over the new agency.
The revision of the ITAR and CCL is seen as a more doable interim reform. U.S. exporters are also supporting a new bill (H.R. 3288) authored by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) to allow the administration to move satellite technology off the restrictive ITAR and onto the CCL, with conditions. After China was caught stealing U.S. satellite technology, satellites were put on ITAR by legislation.
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