Tag Archives: President Joe Biden

President-elect Raisi backs nuclear talks, rules out meeting Biden

By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI (Reuters) -President-elect Ebrahim Raisi on Monday backed talks between Iran and six world powers to revive a 2015 nuclear deal but flatly rejected meeting U.S. President Joe Biden, even if Washington removed all sanctions.

In his first news conference since he was elected on Friday, the hardline cleric said his foreign policy priority would be improving ties with Iran’s Gulf Arab neighbors, while calling on Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia to immediately halt its intervention in Yemen.

Raisi, 60, a strident critic of the West, will take over from pragmatist Hassan Rouhani on Aug. 3 as Iran seeks to salvage the tattered nuclear deal and be rid of punishing U.S. sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

“We support the negotiations that guarantee our national interests … America should immediately return to the deal and fulfill its obligations under the deal,” he said.

Negotiations have been under way in Vienna since April to work out how Iran and the United States can both return to compliance with the nuclear pact, which Washington abandoned in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump before re-imposing sanctions on Iran.

Iran has subsequently breached the deal’s limits on enrichment of uranium, designed to minimize the risk of it developing nuclear weapons potential. Tehran has long denied having any such ambition.

Raisi said Iran’s foreign policy would not be limited to the nuclear deal, adding that “all U.S. sanctions must be lifted and verified by Tehran”.

Iranian and Western officials alike say Raisi’s rise is unlikely to alter Iran’s negotiating stance in talks to revive the nuclear deal – Iran’s hardline Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the final say on all major policy.

Asked if he would meet U.S. President Joe Biden if those sanctions were lifted, Raisi answered: “No.”

RIGHTS AND REGIONAL POLICY

Raisi is under U.S. sanctions over a past which includes what the United States and human rights groups say was his involvement in the extrajudicial killing of thousands of political prisoners in the Islamic Republic in 1988.

When asked about human rights groups’ allegations that he was involved in the killings, he said: “If a judge, a prosecutor has defended the security of the people, he should be praised.”

“I am proud to have defended human rights in every position I have held so far,” he said.

Gulf Arab states have said it would be dangerous to separate the nuclear pact from Tehran’s missile program and “destabilizing” behavior in the Middle East, where Tehran and Riyadh have fought decades of proxy wars, in countries from Yemen to Iraq.

Echoing Khamenei’s stance, Raisi said Iran’s “regional activities and ballistic missile program” were non-negotiable.

A Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen’s war in 2015 after Iran-backed Houthi forces drove its government out of the capital Sanaa. The conflict has been largely stalemated for several years.

“They (the United States) did not comply with the previous agreement, how do they want to enter into new discussions?” he said.

Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran, which severed ties in 2016, began direct talks in Iraq in April aimed at containing tensions. “The reopening of the Saudi embassy is not a problem for Iran,” said Raisi.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi; writing by Raya Jalabi and Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Timothy Heritage)

Biden to sign Juneteenth bill, creating holiday marking U.S. slavery’s end

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will sign a bill into law on Thursday afternoon to make June 19 a federal holiday commemorating the end of the legal enslavement of Black Americans.

The bill, which was passed overwhelmingly by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday after a unanimous vote in the Senate, marks the day in 1865 when a Union general informed a group of enslaved people in Texas that they had been made free two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.

The White House will hold a signing ceremony with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at 3:30 p.m. ET (1930 GMT).

The law comes a year after the United States was rocked by protests against racism and policing following the murder of George Floyd, an African-American man, by a Minneapolis police officer.

Juneteenth will be the eleventh federally recognized holiday, joining a list that includes Christmas, New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving and Independence Day, as well as days honoring presidents and slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Federal employees will start taking the holiday off this year, observing it on Friday since Juneteenth falls on Saturday, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management said on Twitter.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Heather Timmons; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Quoting Irish poet, Biden ends EU trade war in renewal of transatlantic ties

By Steve Holland, Philip Blenkinsop, Marine Strauss and Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden ended one front in a Trump-era trade war when he met European Union leaders on Tuesday by agreeing a truce in a transatlantic dispute over aircraft subsidies that had dragged on for 17 years.

The EU also lifted its tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum for six months in the hope that the United States will do the same for Europe.

Quoting Irish poet W. B. Yeats at the start of his first EU-U.S. summit as president, Biden also said the world was shifting and that Western democracies needed to come together.

“The world has changed, changed utterly,” Biden, an Irish-American, said, citing from the poem Easter 1916, in remarks that pointed towards the themes of his eight day trip through Europe: China, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

Sitting at an oval table in the EU’s headquarters with U.S. cabinet officials, Biden told EU institution leaders that the EU and the United States working together was “the best answer to deal with these changes” that he said brought “great anxiety.”

He earlier told reporters he had very different opinions from his predecessor. Former president Donald Trump also visited the EU institutions, in May 2017, but later imposed tariffs on the EU and promoted Britain’s departure from the bloc.

“I think we have great opportunities to work closely with the EU as well as NATO and we feel quite good about it,” Biden said after walking through the futuristic glass Europa Building, also known as “The Egg”, to the summit meeting room with EU institution leaders.

“It’s overwhelmingly in the interest of the USA to have a great relationship with NATO and the EU,” he said, accompanied by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and the EU’s chairman Charles Michel, who represents EU governments.

The EU and the United States are the world’s top trading powers, along with China, but Trump sought to sideline the EU.

JOBS PROVIDE DIGNITY

Biden also repeated his mantra: “America is back” and spoke of the need to provide good jobs for European and American workers, particularly after the economic impact of COVID-19. He spoke of his father saying that a job “was more than just a pay-check” because it brought dignity.

He is seeking European support to defend Western liberal democracies in the face of a more assertive Russia and China’s military and economic rise.

Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken earlier met with Belgian King Philippe, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and Foreign Minister Sophie Wilmes in Brussels’ royal palace. Biden will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in Geneva.

“We’re facing a once in a century global health crisis,” Biden said at NATO, while adding “Russia and China are both seeking to drive a wedge in our transatlantic solidarity.”

NATO leaders for the first time said on Monday China’s military rise presented “systemic challenges”. China’s diplomatic mission to the EU on Tuesday called on NATO to “stop hyping up in any form the so-called China threat,” and accused the alliance of “slandering China’s peaceful development”.

TRADE TRUCE, STEEL DEADLINE

Biden and the EU side agreed to remove tariffs on $11.5 billion of goods from EU wine to U.S. tobacco and spirits for five years. The tariffs were imposed on a tit-for-tat basis over mutual frustration with state subsidies for U.S. plane maker Boeing and European rival Airbus.

Both sides committed to provide financing to their large civil aircraft producers on market terms and not to fund research in a way that would harm one another.

“I am happy to see that after intensive work between the European Commission and the U.S. administration, our transatlantic partnership is on its way to reaching cruising speed,” von der Leyen said.

In a reference to China, Washington and Brussels will “collaborate on addressing non-market practices of third parties that may harm their respective large civil aircraft industries”.

While Airbus and Boeing have factories in China, they accuse Beijing of massive state subsidies to try to develop rival passenger aircrafts, China’s home-built C919 jets.

However, Washington did not commit to ending another row over its punitive tariffs related to steel and aluminum, as the EU has demanded. The EU has now suspended its countermeasures for six months, von der Leyen said, effectively giving Washington a December deadline to remove its Trump-era duties. “Let’s sort out, within this time period, how we can get rid of this nuisance,” von der Leyen told reporters.

Resolving the steel conflict gives both sides more time to focus on concerns over China’s overproduction of metals, diplomats said.

There was no firm new transatlantic pledge on climate at the summit, however, and both sides steered clear of setting a date to stop burning coal.

(Additional reporting by Kate Abnett, Gabriela Baczynska and John Chalmers in Brussels, writing by Robin Emmott; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Biden backs effort in Congress to repeal ‘forever war’ authority in Iraq

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration said on Monday it supported an effort in the U.S. Congress to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force that allowed the war in Iraq, boosting lawmakers’ push to pull back the authority to declare war from the White House.

“The administration supports the repeal of the 2002 AUMF, as the United States has no ongoing military activities that rely solely on the 2002 AUMF as a domestic legal basis, and repeal of the 2002 AUMF would likely have minimal impact on current military operations,” the administration said in a policy statement.

The U.S. Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress. However, that authority has gradually shifted to the president as Congress passed AUMFs that did not expire – such as the 2002 Iraq measure, as well as one that allowed the fight against al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A handful of members of Congress have been pushing for years to repeal, and possibly replace, the authorizations.

The administration statement said Biden is committed to working with Congress to ensure that outdated authorizations are repealed and replaced with “a narrow and specific framework” to ensure the country can continue to protect itself.

The House of Representatives is due to vote this week on the legislation to repeal the 19-year-old Iraq war authorization, which was introduced by Democratic Representative Barbara Lee. There was no immediate word on when the Senate might consider it.

Lee has long sought to hold presidential military powers in check. She was the only member of Congress to oppose the AUMF passed days after the Sept. 11 attacks, saying it provided too much of a “blank check” to allow the president to pursue military action.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Biden to route U.S. border wall funds to military and construction site clean up

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s administration will return more than $2 billion in funds allotted under his predecessor Donald Trump to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to the military and devote other remaining money to construction site clean up, the White House budget office said on Friday.

The move will return funds to 66 military projects spanning 11 states, three U.S. territories and 16 countries, the White House said in a related fact sheet. The projects include $79 million to renovate a U.S. military school in Germany and $9 million for a firing range in Indiana.

Trump, a Republican, made the wall a signature part of his presidency, saying it was needed to stop illegal immigration and drug smuggling. During his four years in office, Trump secured about $15 billion for the project, including $10 billion in redirected U.S. military funds.

Biden, a Democrat, issued an executive order on Jan. 20 – his first day in office – that paused wall construction, saying “a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.”

The Biden administration said on Friday that it would use its legal authority to stop any new border wall construction while calling on Congress to redirect existing resources to technology-based border security.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said on Thursday that his state would build its own border wall, but whether he has the resources and legal authority to do that remains unclear. Abbott and other Republicans have criticized Biden in recent months for rolling back Trump restrictions as the number of migrants arriving at the border has reached the highest monthly levels in two decades.

After Congress declined to provide money that Trump had requested for wall construction, his administration redirected funds appropriated by lawmakers for other purposes in order to pay for the project. Democrats accused Trump at the time of exceeding his power as president.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)

Biden says biggest vaccine donation ‘supercharges’ battle against coronavirus

By Steve Holland

CARBIS BAY, England (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday that a donation of 500 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to the world’s poorest countries would supercharge the battle with the virus and comes with “no strings attached.”

Biden, speaking alongside Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla in the English seaside resort of Carbis Bay ahead of a G7 summit, thanked other leaders for recognizing their responsibility to vaccinate the world.

“The United States is providing these half billion doses with no strings attached. No strings attached,” Biden said. “Our vaccine donations don’t include pressure for favors, or potential concessions. We’re doing this to save lives.”

Biden, keen to burnish his multilateral credentials on his first foreign trip as leader, cast the donation as a bold move that showed America recognized its responsibility to the world and to its own citizens.

“America will be the arsenal of vaccines in our fight against COVID-19, just as America was the arsenal of democracy during World War Two,” Biden said.

The largest ever vaccine donation by a single country will cost the United States $3.5 billion but will spur further donations from other G7 leaders – including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

G7 leaders want to vaccinate the world by the end of 2022 to try to halt the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 3.9 million people, devastated the global economy and upended the normal lives of billions of people.

Vaccination efforts so far are heavily correlated with wealth: the United States, Europe, Israel and Bahrain are far ahead of other countries. A total of 2.2 billion people have been vaccinated so far out of a world population of nearly 8 billion, based on Johns Hopkins University data.

‘SAVE LIVES’

U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have agreed to supply the U.S. with the vaccines, delivering 200 million doses in 2021 and 300 million doses in the first half of 2022.

The shots, which will be produced at Pfizer’s U.S. sites, will be supplied at a not-for-profit price. Around 100 countries will get the shots.

Pfizer CEO Bourla said the eyes of the world were on the leaders of rich nations to see if they would act to solve the COVID-19 crisis and share with poorer nations.

“This announcement with the U.S. government gets us closer to our goal and significantly enhances our ability to save even more lives across the globe,” he said.

While such a large donation of vaccines was welcomed by many, there were immediately calls for the richest nations of the world to open up more of their giant hoards of vaccines.

Anti-poverty campaign group Oxfam called for more to be done to increase global production of vaccines.

“Surely, these 500 million vaccine doses are welcome as they will help more than 250 million people, but that’s still a drop in the bucket compared to the need across the world,” said Niko Lusiani, Oxfam America’s vaccine lead.

“We need a transformation toward more distributed vaccine manufacturing so that qualified producers worldwide can produce billions more low-cost doses on their own terms, without intellectual property constraints,” he said in a statement.

Another issue, especially in some poor countries, is the infrastructure for transporting the vaccines which often have to be stored at very cold temperatures.

IP WAIVER

Biden has also backed calls for a waiver of some vaccine intellectual property rights but there is no international consensus yet on how to proceed.

The new vaccine donations come on top of 80 million doses Washington has already pledged to donate by the end of June. There is also $2 billion in funding earmarked for the COVAX program led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the White House said.

GAVI and the WHO welcomed the initiative.

Washington is also taking steps to support local production of COVID-19 vaccines in other countries, including through its Quad initiative with Japan, India and Australia.

(Reporting by Steve Holland in St. Ives, England, Andrea Shalal in Washington and Caroline Copley in Berlin; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Keith Weir; Editing by Leslie Adler, David Evans, Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Giles Elgood, Jane Merriman and Marguerita Choy)

U.S. senators pursue infrastructure plan without tax hikes

By David Morgan and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A bipartisan group of 10 senators is trying to build support for a new infrastructure plan to revitalize U.S. roads and bridges without raising taxes, three lawmakers said on Wednesday, a day after President Joe Biden rejected a separate Republican proposal.

Revamping America’s infrastructure is a high priority for Biden, but his proposal has run into trouble in a Congress only narrowly controlled by his fellow Democrats, making Republican support pivotal.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney told reporters that members of the group have reached “tentative conclusions” on their plan. It is expected to total nearly $900 billion. Biden had been pushing for a much higher figure, initially $2.3 trillion, but later lowered to $1.7 trillion.

“We’re not raising taxes,” Romney told reporters. “We’re going to be talking to other members to see if this can get enough support for this to have the necessary votes to be successful.”

The group includes Republicans Romney, Rob Portman, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and Democrats Kyrsten Sinema, Jon Tester, Joe Manchin, Mark Warner and Jeanne Shaheen.

“Taxes would be a huge mistake and I think the Biden administration understands that,” Portman said.

Biden has proposed raising taxes on U.S. corporations to help fund a sweeping package that would address traditional infrastructure projects as well as climate change and social programs. Republicans have shown no appetite for tax increases, having strongly backed a 2017 tax cut law signed by former President Donald Trump.

Tester said he would be willing to look at funding an infrastructure plan without raising taxes.

“I would consider it, sure,” Tester said. “I think there’s plenty of pots of money out there – hopefully they’re not all smoke and mirrors.”

Romney and Portman said members of the group have not settled on a total amount of infrastructure spending and declined to discuss specific provisions they would pursue.

“If we get good support, when we get that support, is when we’d talk about it, bring it out. If we don’t get the support, why, it’ll be closed down,” Romney said.

Portman said the group is looking at funding mechanisms for their proposal that could face Democratic resistance including unspecified user fees and tapping into funds for COVID-19 pandemic-related unemployment payments to individuals that some states have returned to the U.S. Treasury.

“I think the White House is interested in talking with us about appropriate ways to look at some COVID funding that’s being sent back,” Portman said.

Cassidy said he spoke to Biden by telephone on Tuesday to discuss infrastructure.

Most legislation requires 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate to move forward. The Senate is divided 50-50, with Democrats in control because Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote.

Biden broke off talks on Tuesday with Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, who had headed a six-member Republican team including party leaders and top members of relevant Senate committees.

Capito had offered Biden $330 billion in new infrastructure spending, far short of what he has sought.

The 10 senators now working on a new plan are part of a larger 20-member bipartisan group, known as the G-20, that includes Capito. Portman said he would continue to work closely with Capito and her team.

(Reporting by David Morgan; additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Scott Malone and Chizu Nomiyama)

EU, U.S. to end steel tariffs, urge progress into COVID origins, summit draft says

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Union and the United States are set to commit at a summit in Brussels next week to ending their transatlantic trade disputes, and to call for progress on a new study into the origins of COVID-19, according to a draft communique.

The seven-page draft, seen by Reuters, aims to show concrete results of the “new dawn” hailed by EU leaders when U.S. President Joe Biden took over from Donald Trump in January.

The draft, which was discussed by EU ambassadors on Wednesday, commits to ending a long-running dispute over subsidies to aircraft makers before July 11, and to lifting steel tariffs imposed three years ago by December.

Despite pressure by U.S. steel industry groups to keep the “Section 232” national security tariffs imposed by Trump, the draft said: “We commit to work towards lifting before 1 December 2021 all additional/punitive tariffs on both sides linked to our steel and aluminum dispute.”

Biden will meet the European Union’s chief executive, Ursula von der Leyen, and European Council President Charles Michel, who represents EU governments, and will also pledge to promote international cooperation to tackle global warming.

The EU and the United States are the world’s top trading powers, along with China, but Trump sought to sideline the EU.

After scotching a free-trade agreement with the EU, the Trump administration focused on shrinking a growing U.S. deficit in goods trade. Biden, however, sees the EU as an ally in promoting free trade, as well as fighting climate change and ending the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID ORIGINS

At the Brussels summit, both sides will agree to cooperate on China policy and also call for a new study into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the draft said.

“We call for progress on a transparent, evidence-based and expert-led WHO-convened phase 2 study on the origins of COVID-19, that is free from interference,” the draft said.

The two prevailing theories are that the virus jumped from animals, possibly bats, to humans, or that it escaped from a virology laboratory in Wuhan. Members of a WHO team that visited China this year to investigate COVID-19’s origin said they were not given access to all data, fueling the debate.

However, EU diplomats made it clear that the EU’s support to Biden on the virus origins is mostly symbolic.

“We, the EU, are not going to launch our own probe,” one EU diplomat said. “We are not anti-China”.

“The EU doesn’t have intelligence services, and we are not going to try to do this origins search through our member states agencies,” a second EU diplomat said. “The Americans can still talk to European services in member states, but we are not going to get involved.”

Despite the caveats, if agreed the joint stance on China will be a boost for the Biden administration, which seeks friends to stand up to Beijing but has said it will not force any ally to choose sides.

In a concession to the EU, the draft makes no mention of Biden’s proposals for vaccine patent waivers to boost global production. Instead it pledges to reduce U.S. export restrictions and promote voluntary transfer of technologies.

But the task of fully inoculating the world is expected to be a long one. The text says that the United States and the EU “aspire to vaccinate at least two-thirds of the world’s population by the end of 2022”. In other words, as many as 2.5 billion people in the world may not get a shot before 2023.

EU states have until now tried to maintain a strategic balance that avoids alienating either China or the United States.

But China’s military expansion, its claims to sovereignty in most of the South China Sea, and the mass detentions of Muslim Uyghurs in northwestern China have shifted the mood in Brussels.

“We intend to closely consult and cooperate on the full range of issues in the framework of our respective similar multi-faceted approaches to China, which include elements of cooperation, competition, and systemic rivalry,” the draft said.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Putin calls U.S. ransomware allegations an attempt to stir pre-summit trouble

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that suggestions the Russian state was linked to high profile ransomware attacks in the United States were absurd and an attempt to stir trouble ahead of his summit this month with U.S. President Joe Biden.

A hack of Brazilian meatpacker JBS’s facilities in the United States, reported this week, is the third such ransomware hack in the country since Biden took office in January.

JBS told the White House it originated from a criminal organization likely based in Russia.

The White House said on Wednesday that Biden, who is due to hold talks with Putin in Geneva on June 16, was expected to discuss the hacking attacks with the Russian leader to see what Moscow could do to prevent such cyber assaults.

U.S. officials have spoken of criminal gangs based in eastern Europe or Russia as the probable culprits. But Kremlin critics have pointed the finger at the Russian state itself, saying it must have had knowledge of the attacks and possibly even be directing them.

Putin, speaking on the sidelines of the St Petersburg Economic Forum, told Russia’s state TV Channel One that the idea of Russian state involvement was absurd.

“It’s just nonsense, it’s funny,” said Putin. “It’s absurd to accuse Russia of this.”

He said he was encouraged however, by what he said were efforts by some people in the United States to question the substance of such allegations and try to work out what is really going on.

“Thank goodness there are people with common sense who are asking (themselves) this question and are putting the question to those who are trying to provoke a new conflict before our meeting with Biden,” said Putin.

Praising Biden as an experienced politician, Putin said he expected the Geneva summit to be held in a positive atmosphere, but did not anticipate any breakthroughs.

The meeting would be more about trying to chart a path to restore battered U.S.-Russia ties which are strained by everything from Russia’s jailing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to Ukraine to Syria, he said.

Earlier on Friday, Putin told the same economic forum that the United States was openly trying to hold back Russia’s development and accused Washington of wielding the dollar as a tool of economic and political competition.

“We have no disagreement with the United States. They only have one point of disagreement – they want to hold back our development, they talk about this publicly,” Putin told the forum.

“Everything else stems from this position,” he said.

Putin also questioned what he said was the harsh way U.S. authorities had dealt with some people detained during the storming of the Capitol in January by supporters of Donald Trump.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Tom Balmforth; editing by Andrew Osborn)

Biden order bans investment in dozens of Chinese defense and tech firms

By Michael Martina and Karen Freifeld

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Thursday that bans U.S. entities from investing in dozens of Chinese companies with alleged ties to defense or surveillance technology sectors, a move his administration says expands the scope of a legally flawed Trump-era order.

The Treasury Department will enforce and update on a “rolling basis” the new ban list of about 59 companies, which bars buying or selling publicly traded securities in target companies, and replaces an earlier list from the Department of Defense, senior administration officials told reporters.

The order prevents U.S. investment from supporting the Chinese military-industrial complex, as well as military, intelligence, and security research and development programs, Biden said in the order.

“In addition, I find that the use of Chinese surveillance technology outside the PRC and the development or use of Chinese surveillance technology to facilitate repression or serious human rights abuse constitute unusual and extraordinary threats,” Biden said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

A White House fact sheet on the order said the policy would take effect for those companies listed on Aug. 2.

Major Chinese firms included on the previous Defense Department list were also placed on the updated list, including Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC), China Mobile Communications Group, China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co Ltd, Huawei Technologies Ltd and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC).

SMIC is key to China’s national drive to boost its domestic chip sector.

“We fully expect that in the months ahead … we’ll be adding additional companies to the new executive order’s restrictions,” one of the senior officials said.

A second official told reporters that the inclusion of Chinese surveillance technology companies expanded the scope of the Trump administration’s initial order last year, which the White House argues was carelessly drafted, leaving it open to court challenges.

Biden has been reviewing a number of aspects of U.S. policy toward China, and his administration had extended a deadline for implementation set by former President Donald Trump’s order while it crafted its new policy framework.

The move is part of Biden’s broader series of steps to counter China, including reinforcing U.S. alliances and pursuing large domestic investments to bolster American economic competitiveness, amid increasingly sour relations between the world’s two most powerful countries.

Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy coordinator Kurt Campbell said last month that a period of engagement with China had come to an end and that the dominant paradigm in bilateral ties going forward would be one of competition.

Senior officials said the Treasury Department would give guidance later on what the scope of surveillance technology means, including whether companies are facilitating “repression or serious human rights abuses.”

“We really want to make sure that any future prohibitions are on legally solid ground. So, our first listings really reflect that,” a second senior administration official said.

Investors would have time to “unwind” investments, a third official said.

The new list provided few surprises for investors looking to see if they need to unload even more Chinese stocks and bonds.

But some previously identified companies, such as Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC), which is spearheading Chinese efforts to compete with Boeing Co and Airbus, as well as two companies that had challenged the ban in court, Gowin Semiconductor Corp and Luokung Technology Corp, were not included.

In May, a judge signed an order removing the designation on Chinese mobile phone maker Xiaomi, which was among the more high-profile Chinese technology companies that the Trump administration targeted for alleged ties to China’s military.

Stewart Baker, a former Department of Homeland Security official, said the Treasury’s “settled regulatory and legal regime” made it a better place than the Defense Department to enforce the ban.

“This follows in a growing tradition of the Biden administration coming along and saying ‘Trump was right in principle and wrong in execution, and we’ll fix that,'” Baker said.

(Reporting by Michael Martina and Karen FreifeldEditing by Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis)