The administration of President Barack Obama is prioritizing the completion of rewriting the U.S. Munitions List (USML) in 2014 as part of its export control reform initiative.
The administration’s export control reform initiative is moving certain items from the strict State Department-controlled USML to the more flexible and Commerce Department-controlled Commerce Control List (CCL). The goal of export controls is to keep national security-sensitive items like missile or satellite technology from falling into the hands of enemy states. But over time, industry said it was hamstrung because items on sensitive materials, like nuts or bolts on a satellite, couldn’t be sold overseas without going through a complex process known as International Traffic in Arms Reduction (ITAR), which prompted international companies to start marketing parts as “ITAR-free” to boost sales.
Caroline Atkinson, deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for international economics, said Feb. 4 the administration is close to finishing rewriting the USML, an effort she called the cornerstone of the export control reform initiative. Atkinson said final categories for aircraft, gas turbine engines, classified articles and miscellaneous items went into effect in October and four more–vessels, military vehicles, auxiliary military equipment and submersibles–went into effect in January. Atkinson said these eight categories account for over $75 billion in exports.
Atkinson said the administration published another five categories in January; including launch vehicles and missiles, explosives, military training and protective equipment; and that these changes will go into effect this summer. Atkinson made her presentation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in downtown Washington.
Rules currently in the queue for publication, Atkinson said, are satellites, electronics and chemicals. The administration, she said, wants all remaining proposed and final rules published this year. Atkinson said other priorities include behind-the-scenes work like capacity building for a multi-agency export enforcement coordination center. She said this center has already made “big in-roads” into using the U.S.’ export enforcement assets better and helping build better cases. At the same time, Atkinson said, the U.S. is continuing a transition to a single licensing database, which she said will help enhance the nation’s ability to provide more timely decisions and, more importantly, more informed ones.
Atkinson also said as the administration completes rewriting the USML this year, key priorities will be more technical work on the definition and scope of various control issues and the definition of specific categories that would, or would not, be subject to control. Terms, she said, such as public domain, publicly available, technical, technology and fundamental research will need to be defined so the administration can determine what is, and what isn’t, in the scope of its controls.
Atkinson said the administration is also planning on turning to some more difficult issues, like encryption, cloud computing and cyber security, and has started planned changes in both the State and Commerce department regulations. This includes a comprehensive review of the Commerce Department’s export administration regulations, of which, she said, the CCL is just a small part.
The Commerce and State departments earlier this summer also published new final rules that moved other less-sensitive items within four categories of the USML to the CCL. These include vessels of war and special naval equipment, ground vehicles, materials and miscellaneous articles and submersible vessels and related articles. These changes bring the total number of refigured USML categories as part of the export control reform effort to eight out of 21.
The fiscal year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) relaxed stringent export control laws by returning to the president the authority to determine appropriate requirements after years of military-level oversight. The NDAA 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.