The Entity List has become one of America’s favorite weapons in its economic arsenal. The Trump administration just increased it by more than 20,000 companies, provoking ire from Beijing and putting it at the center of this month’s sudden and dramatic deterioration in Sino-U.S. relations.
Illustration by Nate Kitch
At the beginning of Donald Trump’s first presidency, export control lawyer Doug Jacobson urged senior Commerce Department officials to release his client from the binds of an obscure policy tool that was making it difficult to buy American products.
The introduction to the Entity List. Credit: eCFR
Jacobson says the Singaporean company he represented was “in limbo” when he made his appeal to senior aides to Wilbur Ross, the newly confirmed commerce secretary. The Obama administration
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Agriculture has traditionally been a fruitful area for China-U.S. cooperation, dating back to the two countries’ resumption of diplomatic relations in the 1970s. Now it is just another area marked by Sino-American distrust, as Washington hunts Chinese agriscience “spies” and Beijing races to reduce reliance on U.S. farm exports.
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