U.S. Commerce Department Releases Web Tool to Foster Export Law Compliance

The U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., today announced the consolidated screening list (CSL), a streamlined collection of nine different screening lists from the U.S. Departments of Commerce, State and the Treasury that contains names of individuals and companies with whom a U.S. company may not be allowed to do business due to U.S. export regulations, sanctions or other restrictions. The CSL is designed to make it easier for U.S. companies to comply with export laws.

The CSL is also now available through the Trade Developers Portal Application Programming Interface (API) in an open, machine-readable format. By making the CSL available as an API, developers and designers can create new tools, websites or mobile apps to access the list and display the results, supporting private sector innovation to help disseminate the information in ways most helpful to business users.

The U.S. agencies that maintain these lists have targeted the entities for various national security and foreign policy reasons, including illegally exporting arms, violating U.S. sanctions and trafficking narcotics. If a company or an individual appears on the CSL, U.S. firms must do further research into the individual or company in accordance with the administering agency’s rules before doing business with them.