RM Kamlager-Dove Delivers Opening Remarks at Foreign Affairs South & Central Asia Subcommittee Hearing on Export Controls Enforcement

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (CA-37), Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South and Central Asia, delivered opening remarks at the subcommittee’s hearing on strengthening export controls enforcement.

You can watch her remarks here and read her full remarks as delivered below:

Thank you Mr. Chair for holding this important hearing and thank you to Assistant Secretary Peters for being here.

Export controls are only as effective as our ability to enforce them, and today’s hearing is an opportunity to examine and address the major barriers to better enforcement.

Over the past few years, insufficient funding has been one of the most consistent challenges to our export enforcement capacity. BIS has had to execute complex new rules related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s access to AI technologies using outdated IT systems and only 11 Export Control Officers conducting end-use checks overseas.  

I’m glad that Congress has finally stepped up and increased BIS’ budget by 23% for the 2026 fiscal year. My bill, the Export Control Enforcement Act, would increase the number of Export Control Officers who are the backbone of our global enforcement efforts. With these new resources, I hope BIS’ first action is to hire more ECOs in line with my legislation.

But funding is not the only ingredient for effective enforcement. The massive scope of BIS’ remit means success is only possible if enforcement is treated as a team effort—across the interagency, in partnership with industry, and in coordination with our allies. And given that the volume of controlled transactions will always exceed whatever resources BIS may have to monitor them, clear, stable, and predictable regulations are necessary to reduce self-imposed complications.

I am alarmed at how the Trump Administration has gutted some of the key pillars of effective enforcement, including robust cooperation with industry and our allies. This Administration’s self-defeating export controls policy and bureaucratic mismanagement have exacerbated enforcement challenges and hurt the effectiveness of our controls.

First, Trump’s erratic use of export controls as negotiating tools are deeply disruptive to the enforcement process. Temporarily imposing controls to gain leverage in trade talks upends enforcement priorities and burns up finite investigative bandwidth. Similar disruptions are caused by BIS’ weaponization [of is-informed licenses]—making it far more complicated for enforcement officers to identify what constitutes EAR violations.

Secondly, this Administration has dangerously undermined the multilateral cooperation that is essential to effective enforcement.

Partnering with overseas industry and local law enforcement dramatically enhances BIS’ ability to prevent and disrupt violations in real-time. Yet, BIS has gutted the International Policy Office dedicated to managing coordination with foreign counterparts and ECOs abroad. The bureau also stopped providing technical assistance and capacity building to help countries identify and prosecute illegal diversion after Rubio’s foreign aid freeze.

Meanwhile, Trump’s antagonism toward our allies is undermining our export controls regime.

We cannot expect countries to restrict their industry or direct their law enforcement to support our national security priorities if Trump is outright threatening their core territorial and economic interests. We certainly can’t expect our partners to take seriously the threat of China’s AI dominance while Trump turns around and sells potentially hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips straight to the PRC.

As if pulling back from international cooperation weren’t enough, the Administration has also reduced coordination with the private sector, which is key to supporting industry compliance. BIS has discontinued regular industry training sessions across the country and effectively shut down many of its Technical Advisory Committees, which it uses to solicit expert input on export controls. BIS also canceled its yearly Update Conference, which educates over a thousand companies annually on how to comply with new controls. 

Finally, it’s hard to see how Trump’s use of export controls to engage in eye-popping levels of corruption wouldn’t defang related enforcement efforts. If a company like G42 is getting AI chips because their Chair bought a half a billion dollar stake in Trump’s crypto company, can we really be sure that Trump won’t interfere in an enforcement action against his business partners? This compromising of our national security is precisely why financial conflicts of interests are illegal–and why I sent a letter to the Commerce Inspector General requesting an immediate investigation into this arrangement. 

I hope today we can have an honest conversation about the obstacles that need to be addressed to improve our enforcement efforts. I look forward to a robust discussion and I yield back.

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