DDTC announced yesterday that the next meeting of the Defense Trade Advisory Group (”DTAG”) will be held on September 21. The meeting will be open to the public and will take place between 9:00 a.m. and noon at the Dean Acheson Auditorium (entrance located on 23rd Street, NW, between C & D Streets). The Federal Register notice provides information on how to arrange to attend the meeting.

The rumor is that this DTAG meeting will be used by DDTC to push through its new interpretation of the brokering rules in Part 129 of the ITAR. Under this new interpretation (which DDTC denies are new) foreign brokers would be covered by Part 129 even if their only contact with the United States is being involved in a transaction relating to a U.S. defense article.

These new interpretations of the brokering rules are the subject of an article I wrote for this month’s edition of The Export Practitioner. Click here to read the article.