The Commerce Department is standing up a team to process the licensing glut of new technologies coming over from the State Department’s strict U.S. Munitions List, according to sources.
The fiscal year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law Jan. 2, relaxed stringent export control laws by returning to the president the authority to determine appropriate requirements after years of military-level oversight. The NDAA allows satellite components and related items pushed to the stricter U.S. Munitions List (USML) following enactment of the FY ’99 NDAA to be transferred back to the less-stringent Commerce Control List (CCL).
Industry had been pushing for years for Congress to relax export control laws, saying overly strict regulations on innocuous items like nuts, bolts and hoses on satellites were hurting the defense industrial base (Defense Daily, Dec. 20).
Since the State Department was responsible for licensing all items with a military purpose, including components like nuts, bolts and belts used on militarized items, it had a lot more work to do to license exports than did the Commerce Department, according to an industry source.
“You had a lot of stuff that really shouldn’t have been licensed out of the State Department,” the industry source said. “So they’re going to be shifting, in theory, the numbers and Commerce is going to pick up the licensing activity.”
Another industry source said about 24 people were becoming part of this new team to process the additional licenses and it would probably be nine to 18 months before the effort revved up to full speed.
The movement of items from the USML to the CCL won’t happen overnight. Though the law restored to the president the authority to move items from the USML to the CCL, the president still has to literally change jurisdiction, one item at a time, through the Federal Register notice process, according to the industry source. The source also said items to transfer from the USML to the CCL have not transferred yet and won’t transfer until final rules are issued through the Federal Register notice.
The NDAA also still requires the president to submit reports to Congress for any item removed from the USML. Section 38(f) of the Arms Export Control Act requires the president to periodically review items on the USML to determine if any items no longer warrant USML controls and report the results to the House speaker and the Senate Foreign Relations and Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committees. Such a report must be submitted at least 30 days before any item is removed from the USML.
The Commerce Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment.