The Trump administration wants to extract funds from U.S. tech firms for letting them avoid export controls—for example, for letting Nvidia and AMD sell high-end microchips to Chinese companies subject to the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
Raja Krishnamoorthi (shown above, at the microphone), a member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South and Central Asia, object and have proposed legislation to curb the practice.
“Export controls exist to protect our national security,” says Congressman Krishnamoorthi, noting that the administration’s deals to collect 15% of the profit earned by the two tech firms’ chip sales to China “are clearly unlawful.”
The legislation that he and Kamlager-Dove propose would provide “a new pathway to enforcing the law. We must ensure our technology stays out of the wrong hands and that our enforcement reflects both the letter and the spirit of the law….
“Profit-sharing agreements can set a dangerous precedent in which export licenses are sold to the highest bidder instead of rooted in national security considerations, and U.S. businesses are extorted by their own government to compete overseas. With our national security and economic competitiveness at stake, it’s time for Congress to force the Administration to follow the rule of law.”
The proposed legislation would prohibit charging fees to grant an export controls license and would require any already collected fees for such purposes to be returned to the license holder.
Also see:
House.gov: “BIS License Fee Prohibition Act”
