How to Comply With U.S. Export Control Laws

Complying with U.S. export control laws comes down to four questions you answer before every shipment: what are you sending, where is it going, who will receive it, and how will they use it. Get those right and most exports move freely. Get them wrong — even unintentionally — and you risk fines, loss of export privileges, and criminal referral. This guide walks through the system the way an exporter actually meets it.

Know Which Agency Controls Your Export

The first compliance question is jurisdiction: U.S. export controls are split across three agencies, and your item usually falls under one of them. Matching the item to the right regime determines every rule that follows.

Agency	Regulation	Covers
BIS (Commerce)	Export Administration Regulations (EAR)	Commercial and “dual-use” goods, software, and technology
DDTC (State)	International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)	Defense articles and services on the U.S. Munitions List
OFAC (Treasury)	Sanctions regulations	Trade tied to embargoed countries and blocked parties

Most ordinary commercial products fall under the EAR, administered by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). Military and defense-related items fall under the State Department’s ITAR. And any transaction — regardless of the item — can separately trigger OFAC sanctions if it touches a sanctioned country or party. A single shipment can implicate more than one regime at once.

Classify the Item

Once you know the regime, you classify the item. Under the EAR, classification means finding your product’s Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) on the Commerce Control List (CCL), which sorts controlled items into ten categories (from nuclear materials to propulsion systems) and tells you why each item is controlled.

If your item is subject to the EAR but does not match any ECCN, it is designated EAR99 — the catch-all that covers most low-tech commercial goods. EAR99 items generally ship without a license, unless the destination, end user, o