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Alphabet Soup Title: DDTC Updates FAQs on CJs

Posted by at 9:24 pm on September 2, 2010
Category: DDTC

State DepartmentYesterday the Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (“DDTC”) updated the website page of frequently asked questions (“FAQs”) relating to the agency’s commodity jurisdiction (“CJ”) request procedure. Although this update occurs just days before the requirement that all CJ requests must be made on Form DS-4076 and submitted electronically, only one of the revised FAQs relates to this upcoming requirement.

One of the FAQs relating to electronic submission now clarifies the file formats that can be used for supporting documentation. Those formats are BMP, CSV, GIF, JPEG, JPG, PDF, PNG, RTF, TIF, TXT and XML. The other FAQ on electronic submission continues to say that once the CJ request is filed, the only way to submit additional information is by putting it on a CD (!!) and then delivering the physical copy of the CD by horse and buggy to the agency.

Most of the new FAQs deal with general issues that, while known to regular practitioners before the agency, have not previously been stated clearly by the agency. Key among them is the statement that a license is required to export each item subject to a CJ while the CJ is pending. Two new FAQs clarify that a request to change an item from the United States Munitions List to the Commerce Control List can be done by a new CJ request but that a request to change USML category should be made in general correspondence sent to the agency. The other new FAQ is the following:

Submitting Request for Similar or Like Items: I have several items that are very similar. May I submit one CJ covering those items, or a catalog of like items?

The CJ form addresses single items, not a group, family or catalog of items.

Although this is accurate as far as it goes, it does not address the problem of whether various models or configurations of an item are all “single items” or a “group, family or catalog” of items. In the past, DDTC has granted single CJ requests that cover multiple configurations of the same item. Certainly this is easier for the exporter and the agency than the submission of 100 CJ requests for each and every configuration of the same item. Presumably this will remain the case, particularly where the item has the same name but differing model numbers.

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One Comment:

Given the position taken by State through witnesses supplied to DoJ for show trials of exporters to the effect that anyone can get an opinion from DDTC before they export, I think all the exporting community ought to submit CJs on each and every single product offered for sale to foreign buyers. If these Yankees are going to argue that anyone could simply ask DDTC for a determination as to whether their product was ITAR controlled and that any one who didn’t did not do so because they knew the answer would be not to their liking, then we need to make them admit that they actually don’t do jurisdictional determinations all that often (as compared to the total volume of exports) and that they actually prefer self-classification by exporters. We, as a community, need to take direct action against this tyranny and close them down with CJ requests.

Comment by Hillbilly on September 2nd, 2010 @ 10:58 pm