On 16 September 2026, the Occitanie committee of the French Foreign Trade Advisors devoted a webinar to the American and Chinese controls now bearing on European industrial products, with Matthew A. Bock, attorney at the Massachusetts Bar, the French Treasury's trade policy office, and the export control officer of an aerospace supplier. This page sets out what matters, and makes the four chapters available on video.
One date, two jaws closing on the same day
10 November 2026 is not one deadline among others. It is the day two suspensions — one decided on each side of the Pacific — come to an end, having until now concealed the true reach of the machinery.
On the American side, the Bureau of Industry and Security's Affiliates Rule will once again extend licensing requirements to subsidiaries owned fifty per cent or more by a listed entity. A counterparty that needs no licence today may cease to be licence-free overnight — not for what it does, but for who owns it.
On the Chinese side, MOFCOM announcements 55 to 58, 61 and 62 take effect again. Announcement 61 carries the heaviest consequences for a European manufacturer: it would place the Chinese licence on the foreign operator who re-exports a product containing Chinese rare earths above a threshold of 0.1 % of value — a threshold that, in an actuator or a generator, is crossed long before anyone thinks to check.
What the texts do not say: effectiveness
Comparing the four regimes — American, Chinese, European, French — on their jurisdictional hook alone leads to a misjudgement. What dictates corporate behaviour is not the letter of the texts but their effectiveness.
The United States follows the item and the technology wherever they are, and has had the means to do so for decades: real fines — thirty-six million dollars for Bosch, two hundred and fifty-two and a half million for Applied Materials — Entity List designation, denial of access to American technology. The result is worldwide over-compliance, in which US law is applied out of caution well beyond what it requires.
China exercises its control where the world depends on it: at the point of export, at the supplier's premises, before the goods ever move. MOFCOM licences are real and so are the lead times; the extraterritorial reach is written into the 2020 law but remains, to date, untested outside China.
The European Union and France control the territory and the exporter established within it. Their effectiveness is national but genuine, and it is criminal: the Customs Code and the Defence Code provide for imprisonment and for fines assessed on the value of the transactions.
A single product may fall under all four at once. That is where any serious analysis begins.
The two workstreams to open before 10 November
Neither can be completed in a week, which is precisely why both must be opened now.
1. Know who owns your counterparties — and who owns you. The fifty per cent rule exists on both sides: the American Affiliates Rule on one, Announcement 61 on the other. A dated and signed ownership chart, requested from every client and every sensitive supplier, then a screening of the ultimate owners against the four families of lists: half a day per counterparty, and not something to improvise on 9 November.
2. Know which of your part numbers contain Chinese rare earths. The 0.1 % threshold is calculated item by item, for each item capable of standalone use — and the parts, components and assemblies containing the magnets are expressly covered. REACH and RoHS data already collected are often a usable starting point.
The four chapters, on video
Excerpts from the webinar of 16 September 2026, re-edited into four self-contained sequences. Each one can be watched on its own.
Four regimes, four reaches
Who can reach you, and how: the United States, China, the European Union, France — and why the four are not equivalent.
The Chinese jaw
The 2020 law, the implementing decree, announcements 61 and 62: magnets, the 0.1 % threshold, the compliance notification.
The European and French base layer
What the Union and France add on top, and what to do when two bodies of law contradict each other.
Countermeasures: before the licence, after the refusal
Reducing what needs authorising, then reacting to a refusal, a suspension, a listing.
Total running time: 32 minutes. The recordings are in French, with French slides.
I advise aerospace, automotive and electronics manufacturers on their exposure to the four regimes, on screening the ownership of their counterparties, on mapping critical inputs, and on drafting the export control and sanctions clauses that allow a contract to be exited without compensation when a licence is refused.
Source
Webinar of the Occitanie committee of the French Foreign Trade Advisors, 16 September 2026 — “Chips, magnets, batteries: your products caught between Washington and Beijing”.
Further reading
- The Bosch order: when EAR99 no longer protects (in French)
- Rare earths and permanent magnets: a dependency to map (in French)
- SaaS, cloud, AI: the intangible transfer, that forgotten risk (in French)
General information; this does not constitute legal advice. Follow my analyses on LinkedIn →