ACCESSION NUMBER:225089
FILE ID:EC-409
DATE:04/23/92
TITLE:U.S. RELAXES EXPORT CONTROLS ON COMPUTERS, TECHNOLOGY (04/23/92)
TEXT:*92042309.ECO  ECCOCOM  EXP CONTROLS  /et
U.S. RELAXES EXPORT CONTROLS ON COMPUTERS, TECHNOLOGY

(Supercomputer exports to Europe allowed)  (520)
By Bruce Odessey
USIA Staff Writer
Washington -- The Bush administration has relaxed controls on exports of
many high-technology goods, including computers, for many countries.

The Department of Commerce announced the preliminary regulations April 23.
Following a period for comment, the department will publish final
regulations.

President Bush said in remarks to the Council of the Americas later in the
day that the actions eliminate licensing requirements for thousands of
products, deregulating trade valued at $2,500 million a year.

"Just today the United States took steps to facilitate trade in
high-technology goods, an initiative made possible by the changed strategic
environment and the peaceful rebirth of freedom in the formerly communist
1ands," Bush said.

"We relaxed trade restrictions on exports that served us well during the
Cold War era, but are no longer necessary in our new world," he said.

The new Commerce regulations:
-- expand the number of computers and other goods eligible for export with a
distribution license.  Such a license allows authorized businesses to sell
without Commerce review of individual transactions.

-- relax export licensing requirements on nine categories of goods for U.S.
allies in the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls
(COCOM), which comprises Australia, Japan and the NATO countries except
Iceland, as well as for countries that cooperate with COCOM.

-- relax re-export license requirements for the same countries.
On the first action, about 150 U.S. companies that have a Commerce
distribution license can now export supercomputers to Australia, Belgium,
Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the
United Kingdom.  They already had authority to export supercomputers to
Canada and Japan.

Commerce has also raised the threshold for distribution license sales of
less-powerful computers.

For other COCOM countries and cooperating countries, the new threshold is
195 million theoretical operations a second, just below supercomputer
range.  For most other countries that are not subject to COCOM embargo, the
threshold is 100 million theoretical operations a second.

Among the  nine additional categories of goods Commerce is making eligible
for export under a general license to COCOM and cooperating countries  are
semiconductor manufacturing equipment, submersible systems and certain
aircraft and helicopters.

A few critical goods still require case-by-case Commerce approval for export
even within COCOM  These include supercomputers, high-speed streak cameras
and flash discharge x-ray equipment, which all can be used in building
nuclear weapons; cryptographic and night-vision equipment, and some goods
that could assist missile proliferation.

Commerce is eliminating most re-export controls on U.S.-made goods sold by
COCOM countries to customers in non-COCOM countries.  Still requiring
re-export licenses, however, are the critical goods listed above as well as
other items restricted to prevent proliferation of nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons and missiles.

"These changes reflect improvements in export-control cooperation with
foreign governments," the Commerce announcement said, "and are necessary to
ensure that export controls are not an obstacle for U.S. companies
marketing in the European Common Market."

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