Bureau of Industry and Security License Administration Enhancement Act (S. 4835)

Bureau of Industry and Security License Administration Enhancement Act

This bill revises certain processes used by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to review applications for export licenses.

Specifically, the bill requires BIS to administer any export control license or other authorization considered pursuant to an is informed letter or similar guidance or communication sent to a U.S. or foreign person in the same way as the standard interagency process. (An is informed letter notifies individual companies and universities of supplemental license requirements and requires compliance with the letter's license requirements. BIS guidance states that noncompliance with a letter is treated the same as noncompliance with any other license requirement under the Export Administration Regulations.)

The bill requires any is informed letter or similar guidance or communication to be terminated within 60 days after issuing a related license or other authorization unless BIS publishes a regulation that provides for the parameters of the letter or guidance or publishes the communication in the Federal Register.

BIS must establish standards and factors that licensing officers should use when applying a presumption-of-denial standard to license applications. BIS must submit these factors to Congress prior to publishing them in the Federal Register.

The bill expands the requirements for BIS technical advisory committees, including by requiring BIS to establish committees for specified topics.

BIS must review (and report to Congress on) the implementation of a 2025 interim final rule, which provides additional due diligence procedures regarding advanced computing integrated circuits.