Ranking Member Kamlager-Dove Delivers Opening Remarks at South and Central Asia Subcommittee Hearing on Export Controls
November 20, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Foreign Affairs South and Central Asia Subcommittee Ranking Member Sydney Kamlager-Dove (CA-37) delivered opening remarks at the subcommittee's hearing on export controls.
Congresswoman Kamlager-Dove's opening remarks as delivered are below and can be watched here:
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
I'm so glad that we are shining a light on where the Trump Administration's export controls policy is falling short, which is in a number of areas if the frequency of our export controls discussion is any indication.
Advanced SME and their sophisticated sub-components are a particularly important topic. Effective controls are ones that target the strongest chokepoints in the advanced chip supply chain and these technologies remain important contenders for those points of leverage.
But a year into the Trump Administration, continued loopholes are no longer an accidental oversight—they are de facto Administration policy. That's because the key obstacle to more effective controls is Trump himself. Over the past few months, Trump has visibly transformed export controls from a national security tool to a negotiating tool that can be traded away to serve his own political and personal interests. Export conƒtrols have fallen victim to the same self-serving deal-making that characterizes the rest of Trump's foreign policy at the expense of U.S. interests.
Trump's trade war with China has completely undermined the U.S. exports controls regime. By imposing controls to gain leverage in trade talks, the Administration turned export controls into a concession that can be negotiated away. Pausing the 50% affiliates ruling gives Chinese entities a year to create workarounds, reducing the national security benefits in proportion to the economic impact to U.S. companies. Not only that, linking controls to the trade talks has invited Chinese retaliation to a degree that we've never seen, not even under the Biden Administration. Trump has tied our hands by giving the PRC an excuse to deem any new export control regulation as a restarting of the larger tariff war.
Of course, this is not the first time that this Administration has prioritized deal-making with export controls over U.S. national security. Trump rescinded the AI diffusion rule on the same day he arrived in the Middle East to announce unprecedented sales of AI chips to the UAE and Saudi Arabia before any security agreements were put in place.
And the day after downplaying the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Oval Office, he greenlit the sale of 35,000 NVIDIA Blackwell chips to Saudi Arabia's government-backed AI company, Humain. What the supposed cyber security and reporting requirements are, and whether this was even a net benefit for U.S. interests, is an open and very real question.
It's almost as if the U.S. export controls policy is being driven by personal interests of the President or key advisors--whose crypto company reportedly benefited from a two-billion-dollar investment from the UAE in exchange for the NVIDIA deal.
That's why I introduced a State Auth amendment requiring an investigation into this apparent quid pro quo, which all of my Republican colleagues voted against.
Trump's export control deal-making has even extended into blatantly illegal territory. The 15% fee that Trump is planning to charge NVIDIA and AMD to sell AI chips to China is explicitly outlawed in the Export Controls Reform Act, and for good reason. It would turn export control licenses into pay-to-play arrangements that allow Trump to sideline national security considerations and extort U.S. companies.
That's why I introduced my BIS License Fee Prohibition Act with Representative Krishnamoorthi, which imposes enforcement mechanisms to compel the Administration to follow the law. Again, none of my Republican colleagues have signed on.
Trump is doing all of this while pursuing counterproductive immigration policies like the $100,000 fee for H-1B visas that is driving away high-skilled talent that we need to win the AI race. Meanwhile, the PRC has just launched a new K-visa to attract foreign talent in science and technology sectors.
We all have an interest in ensuring U.S. export controls advance our core national security interests. I am so glad that I'm on the Subcommittee and that I work with this Chair who is also incredibly focused on these issues. I'm glad that this hearing is happening, so that we can focus on this fundamental objective, and I certainly look forward to a robust discussion.
Thank you, and I yield back.