A US export rule covering companies owned 50 percent or more by parties on government restricted lists is due to return on November 10, and no notice delaying it has appeared in the Federal Register. Washington and Beijing agreed in September to extend their trade truce to January 10, 2027, and a US official told Export Compliance Daily at the time that the rule’s effective date would move with it.
A check of the Federal Register on November 5 found no document from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) on the rule published since then or awaiting publication. The agency’s two filings scheduled for November 6 are paperwork notices on specialty pharmaceuticals and polysilicon.
The Affiliates Rule, issued in September 2025, extends Entity List and Military End-User List restrictions to any foreign company owned 50 percent or more, directly or indirectly, individually or in aggregate, by parties on those lists or by certain sanctioned parties. Without it, a company falls outside Entity List restrictions unless BIS names it. In March 2025, for example, BIS added six subsidiaries of Inspur Group, a Chinese cloud computing company it had listed in 2023.
BIS suspended the rule for a year after Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Busan in October 2025. The suspension is written to end on its own. It stays the rule through November 9, “absent a future extension,” and says the provisions “will be reimposed on November 10, 2026.”
Pillsbury says Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated in a September 23 interview that the suspension would run through January 10. Miller Canfield said on October 1 that there had been “no explicit confirmation” that the extra two months would apply to the rule. Dechert told clients on October 28 to prepare for November 10 “unless BIS publishes a Federal Register notice confirming an extension.”
China’s Commerce Ministry said the two sides agreed to extend their arrangement, under which certain measures were suspended until November 10, to January 10, in talks that also set up a US-China AI dialogue. Its statement does not mention the rule. China’s suspension of its October 2025 export controls on rare earths and related items, Announcement No. 70, was also written to run to November 10. The ministry’s policy list, whose latest entries on November 5 were dated October 29, shows no announcement changing that date. It does include other export-control notices from October and the proposal to restrict AI technology exports.
BIS could still act at short notice. Last year’s suspension took effect on November 10, was filed with the Federal Register that morning and was published on November 12.
If the rule returns, an exporter that knows a foreign company is partly owned by a listed party but not by how much must resolve the question through due diligence or get a license, unless a license exception is available. Dechert says the underlying restrictions apply on a strict liability basis, so not knowing a counterparty’s ownership does not remove a license requirement. It also says the rule’s temporary general license expired on November 28, 2025, and that companies should not assume transitional relief.
BIS estimated that the one-year suspension would mean 245 fewer license applications. Miller Canfield says the rule’s return would bring significantly broader screening and due diligence obligations, including examining who owns a business rather than checking only whether it appears on a list.
Sources: Federal Register, Export Compliance Daily, China’s Ministry of Commerce
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By the Control Plane Editorial Team