Following months of hearings and other deliberations, Congress passed, and President Trump signed into law on August 13, 2018, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 (FIRRMA). FIRRMA is the first update to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in over a decade and will significantly expand the jurisdiction of the Committee and make other notable changes to its rules. A text of the final version of FIRRMA (Sections 1701 to 1728 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (NDAA)), is available here. The NDAA also includes comprehensive US export control reform legislation that (among other things) mandates increased US export controls on “emerging and foundational technologies” to address some of the US national security concerns that contributed to calls for CFIUS reform. FIRRMA went through several revisions as it advanced through Congress and we discussed earlier versions of the bill in previous advisories from June and January of this year.

For more information, please see our advisory.