This may look like U.S. Government blog week on ExportLawBlog, but it’s purely a coincidence. Yesterday we highlighted the Treasury blog and today the subject is the U.S. Census blog with the somewhat enigmatic title of Global Reach. Because not much was popping in the Census world — something I imagine is more or less always the case — the industrious bloggers at Census thought that they would educate their readers about the mysteries of defense exports and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations with a post* titled “Understanding Basic Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) License Requirements.”

As you continue to file shipments against your DDTC license, your license will become ‘decremented’ with each additional filing. This simply means that your license balance will decrease by the value of each accepted shipment. When the license balance is fully exhausted, an informational message will be sent stating:

176 DDTC LIC NOW EXHAUSTED:

At this time, your company must apply for an amendment to add more value onto the license or apply for a new license.

Um, no. There is so much wrong with the statement quoted above, it’s hard to know where to start. But I’ll start with the statement that decrementing means decreasing the balance by the “value” of each accepted shipment. Decrementing reduces the remaining quantity and the remaining value, not just the remaining value. If you are entitled to export 5 widgets with a value of $50 and you export 5 with a value of $35, the quantity on your license is decremented to zero and the license is kaput. You can’t export $15 more of widgets. You’re done.

Second, you can’t amend a license to increase quantity or value. Section 123.25(c) of the ITAR makes that perfectly clear as to increases in licensed quantities. You need a new license for the additional quantities. This notice posted on the DDTC website indicates that a new license is needed to add additional value to the license.

Here’s an idea: in the unlikely event that DDTC ever starts a blog, it should agree that it won’t post anything on the procedures for challenging population estimates if Census agrees not to post anything ever again on the ITAR.

*The original post disappeared from the Census blog a little while ago, apparently after Census received one or more emails pointing out the howler in the post. Of course, thanks to the miracle of the Google cache, nothing ever really dies on the Internet, and the link to the Census post above is a link to it in the Google cache. In case that ever disappears, here is a pdf version of the post for posterity.