Eliminate EAR license exceptions for countries of concern

Partially done

Printed page 673 21. Department of Commerce

“Eliminating license exceptions;”

What has happened

Sep 2, 2025 Partially done
BIS revoked the Validated End-User authorizations of Intel Semiconductor (Dalian), Samsung China Semiconductor and SK hynix Semiconductor (China) — removing the license-free authorization those three fabs held for the People's Republic of China. That eliminates a license-free authorization for a country of concern, which is a piece of the ask. It is not the general elimination of EAR license exceptions the Quote asks for, and BIS went the other way elsewhere in the window: it relaxed export controls for Syria (2025-09-02), streamlined drone exports (2026-01-21 and 2026-08-14) and gave the United Arab Emirates access to more license exceptions including Strategic Trade Authorization (2026-07-14).
- BIS final rule: Revocation of Validated End-User Authorizations in the People's Republic of China
  Primary Executive branch Sep 2, 2025
- BIS final rule: Enhanced Favorable Treatment for the United Arab Emirates Under the EAR (UAE removed from Country Groups D:3 and D:4)
  Primary Executive branch Jul 14, 2026

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Boundary call, flagged to spot-checks.md. A Validated End-User authorization under 15 CFR 748.15 is an authorization, not a license exception under part 740, so a strict reading of the Quote would leave this not started. The reading taken here is the substantive one — the ask sits in a list of ways to reverse the Export Control Reform loosening, and revoking the license-free authorization three foreign-owned fabs held in China is the same kind of act — with the contrary rules attached to the same event so the picture is not one-sided.

Cluster negative search BIS-1 (chapter log): a jq pass over all 154 in-window Federal Register records whose agency is the Industry and Security Bureau — every Entity List, Unverified List, Denied Persons, Section 232 and licensing document of the window — plus quoted-phrase Federal Register full-text searches since 2025-01-20, plus the Bureau’s whole active Unified Agenda on reginfo.gov (agencyCd 0600, DOC/BIS: seventeen RINs, each opened and read). Specific queries: "license exception" restricted to the BIS slug, and each part 740 license exception by name across in-window rules.

Action: eliminate
Object: EAR license exceptions
ID: 1856