China on CrossGov.com

Export Control Pressure Index Reads 33.9 as BIS Goes a Year Without an Entity List Addition and Beijing Keeps Countering

Sun, 01 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Export Control Pressure Index, CrossGov.com’s new gauge of how hard Washington and Beijing are leaning on each other’s technology trade, reads 33.9 at the end of October 2026, in the Steady zone. The two halves of the reading point in opposite directions. On the US side the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security has gone more than a year without adding a single company to the Entity List. On the Chinese side the Commerce Ministry has kept answering every American move, and in October it went further than it ever has with a draft list that would put large AI models under export control.

FCC Votes to Bar Chinese Test Labs That Check 82 Percent of US Electronics by December 2028

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Federal Communications Commission voted on October 29 to stop recognizing test labs and certification bodies in countries that don’t give American labs the same treatment. China is the one that matters. From December 2028, a phone, laptop, router or camera that needs FCC approval before it can be sold in the United States can no longer be tested in a lab in mainland China.

That covers most of them. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr says labs in China tested 82 percent of the devices that applied for FCC authorization in 2025. Labs inside the United States tested about 4 percent. The draft order counts 609 recognized labs worldwide, a quarter of them in China, and notes that in 2007 the split ran the other way: US labs handled about 31 percent of applications, Chinese labs about 13 percent.

Treasury COINS Act Rule Would Ban US Investment in Chinese and Russian Superintelligence, Supercomputing and Hypersonics

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Treasury Department on October 22 proposed a rule that would stop Americans putting money into companies in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Cuba that build superintelligence systems, supercomputers, quantum machines, hypersonic weapons or certain biotechnology. It is the first rule written under the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security Act, the COINS Act, which Congress folded into the FY2026 defense bill last December. Comments close on December 7.

The proposal turns a program that started as a 2023 executive order aimed at China alone into a statute-backed regime covering five countries and six technology families. It also hardens the AI piece. Under the current rules, a US investor backing a Chinese AI developer often only had to tell Treasury about the deal. Under the new text, investing in any entity developing a “super intelligence system” is simply banned. That’s Treasury following the administration’s September decision to rename artificial intelligence, the subject of an earlier CrossGov.com column.

GAO Finds the US Cannot Tell Who Owns the Critical Mineral Mines on Federal Land

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The federal government doesn’t know how much foreign money is behind the critical mineral mines on its own land, GAO reported on October 16. The 1872 Mining Law doesn’t ask, so the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service don’t collect it.

GAO released two reports that day, both on hardrock mining, which is where most US-mineable critical minerals come from. The first, GAO-27-108094, tried to measure foreign investment in mines on federal land. The second, GAO-27-108196, looked at whether BLM checks that mining claimants are allowed to hold claims at all. Both found the same gap. The agencies that manage the land collect almost nothing on who’s behind the claims.

OFAC Hits Iran Offshore Banks, a Cartel del Noreste Racetrack and Chinese Firms Tied to Google Trade Secret Theft in One Week

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control packed a wide spread of actions into October 13 to 19: Iranian offshore banks, a Mexican cartel’s racetrack, a Bank of America settlement and a fresh use of a 2023 law against trade secret theft.

Together they show how many separate legal authorities Washington now runs at once. Every designation below rests on an executive order or an existing statute. None needed a vote.

FCC Ban on Components From Covered List Chinese Firms Takes Effect as the Agency Sets Spectrum and Drone Votes for October 29

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Federal Communications Commission rule barring new equipment authorizations for devices that contain “logic-bearing” components from companies on the agency’s Covered List took effect on October 13. The Covered List names firms the government considers national security risks, including Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision, Dahua and Hytera, and has been expanded to include some Chinese drone makers.

The rule, adopted as FCC 26-50, closes a gap. Since 2022 the FCC has refused to authorize equipment made by Covered List firms. Devices from other manufacturers containing their chips or modules could still be approved. Logic-bearing components include processors and communications modules, the parts that can run software or move data.

Treasury Fines Bank of America More Than $1.2 Billion for Willful Money Laundering and Sanctions Violations, a Record for the OCC

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Treasury Department announced on October 13 what it called record enforcement actions against Bank of America, totaling more than $1.21 billion. The bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act, the main US anti-money-laundering law.

The penalties come from three Treasury units. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) assessed $1.2 billion. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which supervises national banks, imposed a $750 million civil penalty, its largest ever. The Office of Foreign Assets Control settled 475 apparent sanctions violations for $11.6 million. The three figures add to more than the headline total, which suggests some are credited against each other; Treasury’s release gives the combined figure as more than $1.21 billion.

FBI Seizes Chinese Contractor's Hacking Tools Used Against US Agencies as CISA's Patch Deadline Passes

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The FBI has seized seven internet domains used to run two hacking tools, MicroScan and FishHub, operated by Integrity Technology Group, a Beijing company with Chinese government contracts. US and allied agencies tie the company to the hacking group known as Flax Typhoon. A joint advisory from CISA, the FBI and the NSA, with Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Spain and Britain, lists victims including US government agencies, manufacturers, hospitals, IT firms, law enforcement, schools and religious groups.

Graham Act Tariff Deadline Is Days Away With No Country List, Rates or Waiver Published

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, signed on September 18, says the President “shall” raise duties on “all goods” from covered countries “to a rate of up to 100 percent ad valorem” within 30 days of enactment. That deadline falls around October 18 to 19. As of October 12, the White House, USTR and Treasury had published no list of countries, no rates and no waiver.

The law also requires a written justification to six congressional committees at least ten days before any duty takes effect, which pointed to about October 8. Whether one was sent privately hasn’t been disclosed.

US Government Takes Equity Stakes in Critical Minerals Companies: How Washington's Approach Compares With China and the EU

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In July 2025 the Pentagon became a major shareholder in the company that runs America’s only operating rare earth mine. The Defense Department bought $400 million of MP Materials preferred stock at $30.03 a share, with warrants, added a $150 million loan, and promised two things a market investor never would: a ten-year price floor of $110 per kilogram for the company’s neodymium-praseodymium oxide, and a ten-year commitment to buy all the output of a new magnet plant.

USTR's Port Fees on Chinese Ships Are Still Set to Return November 10, Though Treasury Says the Truce Runs to January

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Office of the US Trade Representative’s fees on Chinese-built and Chinese-operated ships are suspended only until 11:59 pm on November 9, 2026. That date is set in a USTR notice published last November. On September 23 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the wider US-China truce would run to January 10, 2027. USTR hasn’t published anything to match.

The two dates are now about two months apart. Shipping lines, importers and charterers are pricing voyages that will arrive after November 9, and the only legal text in force says the fees come back the next morning.

Semiconductor Export Controls Fragment: Nvidia H200 Licenses Stall, Nexperia Splits and China Targets Japan

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On September 28, 2026, China’s Commerce Ministry confirmed what Washington had announced a few days earlier: the US–China trade truce is extended by two months, to January 10, 2027. With it goes the pause on a US rule that would have extended chip export controls to companies majority-owned by listed Chinese firms.

Two months is the new unit of semiconductor policy. Rules are issued, suspended, licensed, frozen and extended on short timers, and each government runs its own clock. For a chip company, the problem in 2026 is four or five moving regimes that don’t line up.

US-China Trade Truce Extended to January 10, 2027: What Each Side Has Suspended and What Is Still in Force

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On September 23, 2026, the day Xi Jinping arrived in Washington for a three-day state visit, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the trade truce between the two countries would be extended to January 10, 2027. The aim, he said, was to give both sides more time on the economic front. China’s Commerce Ministry confirmed the extension a few days later.

Two more months. The truce has become the operating system of US–China economic relations: a set of suspended threats, each with an expiry date, renewed just before they bite.

As Washington Fights the States Over AI Rules, the EU Delays Its High-Risk AI Act Obligations to December 2027

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The United States has no federal AI law, and the administration’s main AI fight in 2026 is with American states that wrote their own. Across the Atlantic, the EU has the opposite problem: one detailed law for 27 countries, which it has just slowed down.

The EU’s AI Act was meant to bite hardest on August 2, 2026. That was the date when rules for high-risk AI, the systems that screen job applicants, score credit, grade exams or support policing, were due to apply. They didn’t. Brussels moved the date, by law, a month before.

A US Export Rule Split Nexperia in Two: Dutch Court Probe, Chinese Asset Freeze and a Deal With India's Tata

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On September 29, 2025, the US Commerce Department extended its export controls to any company at least 50% owned by a listed entity. One of the companies caught was Wingtech, the Chinese owner of Nexperia, a Dutch maker of basic car chips. Within days the Dutch government had taken control of the company, and within a week China had blocked its exports. A year later, Nexperia is effectively two companies.

US-Japan Critical Minerals Pact Moves Toward Price Floors as China Squeezes Japan's Rare Earth Supply

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In March 2026, at a summit in Washington, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced a US–Japan action plan on critical minerals. It’s meant to be the basis for a binding agreement among several countries, with minimum prices for minerals enforced at the border, coordinated stockpiles and joint financing for mining and processing projects. The same summit added a memorandum on deep-sea rare earths near Japan’s Minamitorishima island and a second tranche of Japanese investment, up to $73 billion, including 13 critical mineral supply chain projects.

TikTok's US Joint Venture Still Runs on ByteDance's Licensed Algorithm as the Company Skips a House China Committee Hearing

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

TikTok’s security chief was due to testify before the House Select Committee on China on September 15. On August 27 the company pulled out, citing litigation over child safety. Committee chair John Moolenaar said it “really undermines their credibility,” and that he couldn’t tell whether the decision came from TikTok’s new US company or from ByteDance in Beijing.

That’s the question Congress has been asking since the US deal closed on January 22, 2026.

US Allows Nvidia H200 Sales to China With a 25% Cut, but Shipments Stay Trivial as Beijing Blocks Imports

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In January 2026 the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security changed its rules to allow exports of Nvidia’s H200 chip, and similar parts, to approved customers in China. The rule took effect on January 15. In return the US government takes 25% of the sale value, collected through a duty when chips pass through the US for checks before export.

Eight months later, very little has shipped. Nvidia confirmed its first H200 deliveries to Chinese customers on August 27, and said China revenue remained under 1% of its data-center sales. Its guidance for the current quarter assumes no China data-center revenue at all.