How Biden could cut Russia off from world tech
Categories: FOREIGN COUNTRIES
If Russia further invades Ukraine, the Biden administration could deprive it of a vast swath of low- and high-tech US and foreign-made goods, from commercial electronics and computers to semiconductors and aircraft parts, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.President Joe Biden would achieve that by expanding the list of goods that require US licenses before suppliers can ship them to Russia, and his administration would then deny those licenses, the people said. They were not announced on Tuesday as part of a round of sanctions unveiled by Biden to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for recognizing two breakaway regions of Ukraine as independent and deploying troops into the regions to "keep the peace."But a senior administration official said, “if Putin escalates further, we will escalate further, using both financial sanctions and export controls, which we’ve yet to unveil.”The package, which was still being fine-tuned over the weekend and could change, could come even as some White House officials have pledged to spare the Russian consumer from the brunt of the penalties. The goal of the export control measures "is really to degrade Russia's ability to have industrial production in a couple of key sectors," Peter Harrell, who sits on the White House's National Security Council, said in a speech last month. He said the administration was focused on industrial production and high-tech sectors "rather than how do we sort of target the Russian people writ-large." The administration has been vowing to hit Moscow with a potent cocktail of banking sanctions and export controls for weeks, in response to a massing of hundreds of thousands of Russian troops along Ukraine's borders.On Tuesday, Biden said the United States would impose sanctions against two large Russian financial institutions and Russian sovereign debt and against some Russian elites and their family members. On Monday, as an initial response to Putin's moves into eastern Ukraine, Biden vowed to end investment in and trade with the regions while British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced initial sanctions targeting Russian banks and billionaires.Finally, Washington would expand the scope of products that would need approval from the United States when sent to Russian military end users through an even broader application of the FDPR rule, subjecting to US licenses requirements all items made abroad with U.S. tools and destined for companies that support the military. US exports to Russia were under $5 billion in 2020, according to the Commerce Department, and already face many curbs. But the use of the FDPR rule dramatically expands the impact of the restrictions included in the package.