WASHINGTON: U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Tuesday (May 31) that the Biden administration is actively considering adding new Chinese companies to the government’s economic blacklist as it investigates what she calls efforts China to evade US sanctions.
The Commerce Department’s Entity List restricts access to US exports.
Raimondo told reporters that the administration was working “to obtain information on bad actors in China and add these companies to the Entity List … We are in the midst of a number of investigations.”
She added: “I don’t see us easing the sanctions anytime soon.”
China is not standing still, she said. “They are proposing that we know new ways to evade our sanctions, creating new (corporations) and such. We have a very aggressive and vigilant effort going on.”
She said that, where possible, she wanted to work with US allies to align their trade restrictions with US export controls.
The Trump administration has used the Entity List aggressively, adding dozens of Chinese companies, including Huawei in 2019. It also added chipmaker SMIC and Chinese drone maker DJI in 2020.
The Biden administration has expanded that policy, and in November put a dozen Chinese companies on the Entity List for national security and foreign policy reasons, in some cases citing their help in developing IT efforts. quantum of the Chinese army.
In December, Commerce added the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences and its 11 research institutes to the list of entities.
Raimondo cited a recent report that Apple Inc was considering moving some production out of China. “I’ve heard the same from many other American manufacturing companies, many of which have been manufacturing in China for decades,” she said.
In February, the Commerce Department added 33 Chinese entities to its “unverified list,” requiring US exporters to follow more procedures before shipping goods to entities.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington said last year that the United States is “using the catch-all concept of national security and abusing state power to suppress and restrict Chinese businesses in every way possible.” .
