Public Policy

Deemed Export Advisory Committee Issues Final Report

On December 20, 2007, the Commerce Department’s Deemed Export Advisory Committee submitted its final report to the Secretary of Commerce recommending to the Department that it seek to streamline and simplify regulations that have been placed on university research and foreign-born researchers as a means of protecting sensitive military technologies. “It is the Committee’s principal conclusion that the existing Deemed Export Regulatory Regime no longer effectively serves its intended purpose and should be replaced with an approach that better reflects the realities of today’s national security needs and global economy,” states the committee in its letter to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. In response, Secretary Gutierrez pledged “to carefully review the Committee’s findings as we move forward to strike the right balance of protecting national security with continuing to attract the world’s best and brightest.”

The committee put forth two key recommendations for the Secretary’s consideration for an overall revamping of the Deemed Export regulatory regime:

Replace the current Deemed Export Licensing process with a simplified new process that will both enhance national/homeland security and strengthen America’s economic competitiveness, and
Extend the educational outreach program currently conducted by the Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security to help assure that all parties potentially subject to licensing with the Deemed Export rules are familiar with those rules.

The report also includes a series of specific recommended implementing actions. Of specific interest, the committee recommends “expanding the determination of the national affiliation of potential licensees to include consideration of country of birth, prior countries of residence, and current citizenship, as well as the character of a person’s prior and present activities, to provide a more comprehensive assessment of probable loyalities.”

NAFSA consults closely with the Association of American Universities on this issue. For additional information on this subject, access their Export Control website.

View the entire report (1mb

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View the Commerce Department press release