Trade Compliance
Guides & Insights

BIS added 93 entities to the Entity List in a single February 2024 rule—63 under Russia, the rest spread across China, Turkey, UAE, and five other countries. For the compliance officer who screened a Turkish distributor on Monday and shipped on Friday, that week's Federal Register notice wasn't theoretical. It was a phone call from legal.

OFAC settled with Harman International for $1.45M after UAE distributors diverted audio products to Iran for over two years. Learn how name-matching misses distributor diversion and what actually works to prevent secondary sanctions exposure.

Most US-manufactured medical devices can ship to China without a BIS license, but the exceptions will cost you $364,992 per violation. Learn how to classify devices correctly and navigate Entity List restrictions.

BIS published the Affiliates Rule on September 29, 2025, effective immediately. Any company 50% or more owned by an Entity List party became subject to the same license requirements—overnight. Learn how point-in-time screening fails and what actually works.

BIS imposed $47M in civil penalties for diversion-related export compliance violations in 2025. Learn which red flags predict regulatory action and how to build scalable detection systems.

OFAC published updates on 7 separate days during the first three weeks of December 2025 alone. When multiple authorities push updates within hours of each other, that 'screened and cleared' status from Tuesday morning becomes worthless by Tuesday afternoon.

Nearly 80,000 sanctioned persons globally as of March 2025. OFAC and EU lists overlap maybe 60% on Russia-related names. The other 40%? Different targets, different timelines, different rules. Learn how the 50% ownership rule, secondary sanctions, and enforcement approaches differ across jurisdictions.

OFAC published sanctions list updates on December 23, 19, 18, 17, and 11 in the final weeks of 2025. The EU Consolidated List operates on a different calendar entirely—Council Decisions bundle designations into packages that drop every few weeks rather than every few days. When your screening cadence is built around one authority's publication patterns and you ship to both jurisdictions, that mismatch creates compliance gaps.

OFAC published sanctions list updates nearly every business day through December 2025. When you're running weekly batch screening and Treasury drops a Friday afternoon designation, your Monday morning shipment is already in transit to a blocked party. That gap creates measurable compliance exposure that most SMB exporters underestimate until the subpoena arrives.