Most EU member states missed a July deadline to implement the EU’s new corporate sustainability reporting rules into national law, causing uncertainty for businesses that want to ready their compliance procedures before the rules take effect beginning next year, a major European law firm said.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ben Cardin, D-Md., who has been working for months to develop a major China bill (see 2402010067 and 2406130071), said Aug. 20 that parts of the legislation could end up in the FY 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The Treasury Department should make sure its investment screening regulations don’t unfairly discriminate against foreigners and should do more to curb a rise in “xenophobic” U.S. state and federal land laws, nonprofits told the agency and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. They criticized several bills that could place new investment restrictions on people from “countries of concern,” including China and Iran, and said they’re concerned CFIUS may not have the resources to manage its expanding jurisdiction.

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Federal Maritime Commissioner Carl Bentzel hopes to issue a final report later this year that will expand on ways carriers, ports, railroads and others can better share supply chain data and real-time shipping information, he said this week. Bentzel said he believes the government eventually should turn some of the report’s recommendations into new mandates, including one that would require carriers to provide shippers with live, in-transit updates on their cargo.

Chinese semiconductor equipment maker Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) sued the Pentagon last week for wrongly designating the firm as a Chinese military company. AMEC claimed that its designation violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 and the U.S. Constitution (Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment v. United States, D.D.C. # 24-02357).

A new rule issued by the State Department last week will finalize an exemption for defense trade between the U.S., Australia and the U.K., potentially removing export control barriers for a range of items that had previously faced strict license requirements under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Australia and the U.K. said the exemption and other AUKUS changes are expected to lift restrictions on billions of dollars worth of exports each year and eliminate hundreds of export licenses once the “license free” trade begins next month.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. has levied nearly $70 million in penalties so far this year, including a $60 million fine against T-Mobile after the telecommunications company violated its national security agreement. The announcement, the first time CFIUS has named a company it has penalized, comes after the committee last year issued a record-setting four penalties (see 2407230017) and in April proposed expanding its enforcement powers (see 2404110037), underscoring its recent focus on punishing violators and increasing penalties.

The Bureau of Industry and Security this week fined a Pennsylvania electronics business and its Hong Kong affiliate $5.8 million after the company voluntarily disclosed and admitted to illegally shipping controlled technology to China, including to military research institutes on the Entity List. The company, TE Connectivity Corporation, had “knowledge or reason to know” that the shipments violated U.S. export controls, BIS said, adding that its employees in China hid the true end-users and bypassed the company’s denied-party screening process.

The State Department on Aug. 15 submitted a determination to Congress that the Australia and U.K. export control systems are “comparable” to those of the U.S., clearing the way for both countries to potentially benefit from defense trade exemptions as part of the AUKUS partnership (see 2408070048). The agency said it plans to “shortly publish” an interim final rule to amend the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and implement that exemption, which will take effect Sept. 1.