International Trade Law News

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) held a program earlier this week entitled U.S. Satellite Export Controls: Is It Getting Better or Worse? The program's opening remarks were made by Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) and featured representatives from ATK, Aerojet, IOT Systems, Orbital Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Intelsat.

The overwhelming consensus was that U.S. export controls on commercial satellites are getting worse.

Representative Tauscher said it is time for Congress to revisit the issue of transferring the licensing authority for commercial satellites back to the Commerce Department, which was one of the recommendations contained in the 2002 report issued by the CSIS Satellite Commission. Representative Tauscher said that when one of her staff members that paid a visit to the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) said that licensing officers categorized license applications in three categories: old, older and oldest.

The industry representatives uniformly criticized the current regulatory regime on commercial satellites and agreed that license and technical assistance agreement (TAA) processing times are getting worse. In fact, it is not uncommon for it to take 6-7 months for a TAA to be approved by DDTC. Not only are these delays leading to lost sales opportunities by U.S. companies, they said, but U.S. export controls on commercial satellites have led to the creation of overseas competitors that are not subject to U.S. export controls, including the creation of "ITAR-free" satellites by European companies.

For a good overview on U.S. export controls on commercial satellites, see CSIS report at the following link: www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/030502_regulating_satellite_exports.pdf.

Labels: DDTC, Export Controls