At the Strategic Security Blog, run by the Federation of American Scientists, Matt Schroeder reports today on a briefing given last week at a Washington think tank by Mark Esper of the Aerospace Industries Association. Esper announced “Phase II” of the AIA’s campaign to reform U.S. export laws.

Some of you may remember Phase I which included the proposal to remove the license requirement for export of certain items on the USML to Australia and the United Kingdom. That proposal met its ignominious end in 2004 in the House International Relations Committee in 2004 at the hands of Chairman Henry Hyde who seemed convinced that the U.K and Australia would divert unlicensed exports from the U.S. to various unspecified but problematic nations and groups.

According to Schroeder, Esper revealed little about the content of Phase II other than to say that the proposals were “measurable, attainable, and meaningful,” that they were “capable of reasonably quick implementation by the administration,” and that (at least some of) the proposals “do not involve Congressional action.” Oddly the AIA’s White Paper on Export Reform has disappeared from the AIA’s website or, rather, the link to that White Paper is now broken. Once bitten, twice shy, I suppose.

So, we’ll have to wait and see both what AIA intends to propose and whether the 110th Congress will be more open to reform than its predecessors.

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