Saturday, April 27, 2024
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Key Issues Optical clocks Prototype funding SPAFORGEN
Two senior administration officials this week publicly drove home the point that the ongoing export control reform initiative aimed at streamlining the United States Munitions List (USML) is on track to be completed by late next year, and that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta supports the effort as strongly as his predecessor Robert Gates, Inside U.S. Trade reports today. Further:
Anthony Aldwell, deputy director of the Defense Technology Security Administration, told a Dec. 6 session of an export control conference organized by the Practicing Law Institute that Panetta has not been as visible as Gates on the initiative, but that he fully backs the effort.
Aldwell said that Panetta made a "very strong statement that he is fully behind" the export control reform initiative in a meeting he recently held with "prominent" chief executive officers of U.S. companies and Commerce Undersecretary for Industry and Security Eric Hirschhorn.
He also said Panetta will be more public about his support in the near term. "I think you will see him a little more active [on the export control reform initiative] as we get into the new year," Aldwell said.
Gates unveiled the export control reform initiative in an April 2010 speech. In his remarks, he emphasized that the administration would safeguard critical military items, but also wants to facilitate increased trade in defense items with close allies and move away from controlling items that are widely available.
A day earlier at the same conference, Kevin Wolf, assistant secretary of Commerce for export administration, said Panetta is "equally on board" with the national security vision of the export control reform initiative as Gates. "He's expressed his support for [the initiative] equally," Wolf said.
Private-sector sources speculated that a more active role by Panetta will help quell objections from members of Congress who fear that the reform effort will compromise U.S. national security through easing controls. Some lawmakers have objected to scaling back the USML on these grounds.