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Reliance on Supplier's Country of Origin Certification Reasonable

Client Alert | 1 min read | 09.04.14

On August 29, 2014, the D.C. Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment for the contractor in a qui tam FCA case alleging Govplace had violated the Trade Agreements Act (TAA) by unreasonably relying on the distributor's country of origin certification and selling IT hardware that allegedly failed to comply with the TAA. The court concluded not only that Govplace could reasonably rely on the distributor's certification (a practice it had disclosed to GSA during Contractor Administrator Visits), but also that, because the hardware was generally manufactured in both TAA-designated countries and in non-designated countries, neither an email from the manufacturer's employee nor a competitor's price list suggesting conflicting country of origin information undermined Govplace's continued reliance on the distributor's certification.

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Client Alert | 8 min read | 10.01.25

BIS Issues “Affiliates Rule” to Dramatically Expand Applicability of Entity and Military End-User Lists

On September 29, 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced a sweeping Interim Final Rule (IFR), (the “Affiliates Rule”) expanding which entities qualify as Entity List or Military End-User entities, thereby subjecting those entities to elevated export control restrictions under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). U.S. export restrictions applicable to entities on the Entity List, Military End-User (MEU) List, and Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN List) now apply to foreign affiliates that are, in the aggregate, owned 50% or more by one or more of the aforementioned entities. An entity that becomes subject to these restrictions because of its ownership structure will be subject to the most restrictive controls that attach to any of its parent entities, regardless of ownership stakes....