The Commerce Department on Friday loosened export controls on the United Arab Emirates, granting the government and approved firms license-free access to advanced artificial-intelligence chips, military equipment, satellites and spacecraft.
The 17-page rule, viewable in the Federal Register and scheduled for official publication Tuesday, moves the UAE into a country grouping otherwise reserved for NATO members and other treaty allies, and directs the Bureau of Industry and Security to "favorably review" chip and server applications from MGX, the Abu Dhabi investment firm that used a Trump-family-linked stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment in the crypto exchange Binance.
What changes
Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI will no longer need separate licenses to ship advanced computing items to their UAE operations, and Emirati firms G42 and Core42 also gain license-free access, Commerce said. The department eased controls on certain military, satellite, spacecraft, oil-and-gas and civil-nuclear exports at the same time. The UAE will be the only country in its new grouping that is not a member of multilateral export control regimes; Israel and Saudi Arabia are not in the group.
Commerce framed the move as recognition of the UAE's status as a "U.S. Major Defense Partner" and its "support in advancing U.S. national security interests, including Operation Epic Fury," the U.S.-Israeli air war on Iran that began in February. The department said the license-free treatment is consistent with a framework the two countries finalized in May 2025 to move hundreds of thousands of Nvidia AI chips.
Warren's charge
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, called the MGX provision "corrupt" hours after the unpublished rule surfaced. MGX used USD1, a stablecoin issued by the Trump-family-affiliated World Liberty Financial, to fund its Binance stake, and it also backs OpenAI and Anthropic.
"We already know that the UAE royal behind G42 and MGX secretly bought a 49% stake in the Trump crypto company, World Liberty Financial," Warren said, citing the president's recent financial disclosure to argue Trump "made a whopping $263 million windfall related to this deal" out of $1.4 billion in crypto earnings last year. She called on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and BIS Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler to testify before Congress "to explain this corrupt deal and how it could put our national security at risk." Kessler is already scheduled to appear next week before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The administration case
Both center-lean accounts of the rule drew the administration's defense from Commerce's own statement: the national-security partnership, Operation Epic Fury and more than $1 trillion in Emirati foreign direct investment in the United States. Neither Trump nor Commerce publicly responded to Warren's demand for hearings by press time, and Commerce did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. CNBC noted that the rule text offers no evidence tying the UAE's dealings with World Liberty Financial to Commerce's decision.
The rule takes effect when it publishes in the Federal Register on Tuesday.