Commerce Department

On 29 May 2026, BIS co-ordinated the "Economic Fury" enforcement action with OFAC and the FBI, targeting an Iranian procurement ring that funnelled controlled US technology to MODAFL-controlled SAIRAN. The goods, spectrum analysers and non-linear junction detectors, are controlled under the Export Administration Regulations, and the ring impersonated US small businesses specifically to evade BIS's Entity List. On 14 May, Commerce cleared ten Chinese firms to purchase Nvidia chips, timed to the Trump-Xi summit, illustrating the Department's concurrent role: tightening Iran controls while selectively relaxing China technology restrictions.

Commerce opened a Section 232 national security investigation into UAS imports in July 2025. The inquiry's 270-day statutory Deadline lapsed on approximately 28 March 2026 with no report transmitted to the President and no tariff announced; the administration's 2 April proclamation covered metals only, leaving drone imports untouched. The silence was a win for commercial drone importers but a setback for the domestic UAS manufacturing lobby seeking tariff protection against China-linked suppliers.

On 27 June 2026, the Commerce Department partially lifted its restriction on Anthropic's frontier models, Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5, turning the hard cut-off imposed on 12 June into a fast-moving but still-restricted access regime. The reversal came fifteen days after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's original order and five weeks ahead of the EU AI Act's GPAI enforcement start on 2 August 2026, extending Commerce's export-control lever from hardware into frontier AI models themselves.

On 7 July, the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, chaired by Dame Chi Onwurah, cited that order as evidence the UK has "no coherent strategic framework" for sovereign technology and risks being "cut off at whim" by decisions made in Washington. The finding turns Commerce's fifteen-day reversal on Fable 5 and Mythos 5 access into a case study cited by a foreign legislature: however fast the Department moves to correct itself, the underlying authority over an ally's access to frontier AI models remains Washington's to exercise.