Days after President Donald Trump waived sanctions on Russia over a diesel deal, his own Treasury Department has proposed new rules that would restrict American investment in Russia anyway — alongside China, North Korea and other “countries of concern.”
The Treasury proposed the rule on Thursday to crack down on US high-tech investments — in supercomputing, artificial intelligence, hypersonic systems and biotechnology — in adversarial nations. The proposal expands a program that began in 2023, when then-President Joe Biden signed an executive order restricting outbound American investment in sectors like semiconductors, quantum computing and AI going into China. The Treasury later set up the Outbound Investment Security Programme to enforce it.
In December 2025, Congress codified and expanded the program through the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security Act, targeting more technologies and more countries — including Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Russia. Thursday’s proposal implements that law, and it goes further than what came before: it would add hypersonic systems capable of traveling at five times the speed of sound, supercomputing, biotechnology and AI to the restricted list.
The Russia detail is the one that will raise eyebrows. Washington is proposing to restrict investment in Russia just days after Trump waived sanctions on Moscow following the diesel deal with President Vladimir Putin — a reminder that the American state can pull in two directions at once.
What would actually change
The rule would apply only to investments exceeding $50,000 and would exclude many financial investments, including ordinary stock purchases. American investors would have to notify the government about certain transactions involving foreign companies developing sensitive technologies — and some investments would be prohibited outright. The Treasury will hear public comments before issuing a final rule.
The biotech addition could have the widest commercial ripple. US drugmakers have increasingly turned to China for new medicines, and restricting investment in Chinese biotechnology companies could complicate those financial ties, as Bloomberg Law noted.
There was also a linguistic tell: the proposal uses Trump’s preferred term for artificial intelligence — “superintelligence,” or SI — in the rule text. AI policy in this administration is being written in the president’s vocabulary.
The reactions
“The proposed rule sends an important signal to markets that Washington is tracking where US capital is flowing and what capabilities it is helping build,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He argued the screening “recognises that capital can accelerate military-relevant capabilities just as surely as technology transfer can.”
Others warned of the compliance burden. The rule “will require more substantial compliance programs to manage risk,” said Jason Chipman, a former Justice Department lawyer now at the firm WilmerHale. Ryan Majerus, a former US trade official now at King & Spalding, called it “just the first step in a fairly long process to get to changes which presumably will be more enforcement-minded, to put more teeth behind the outbound investment program.”
The enforcement is already real: in July, the Treasury issued a $200,000 fine against a US-based company for failing to report a $92,500 investment in a Chinese AI and robotics company made by one of its subsidiaries.
Why it matters
This is the next front of the US-China economic rivalry. Since Trump’s first term, the two countries have restricted the export of sensitive technology and critical products — China’s rare earth minerals, America’s advanced computer chips — and slapped tariffs on each other’s goods. A temporary truce was extended into January. But the outbound-investment rule shows the decoupling is deepening structurally: it is no longer just about what America sells to China, but about what American money is allowed to build there.
For global investors, the message is plain. Washington is no longer only watching technology crossing borders — it is watching the capital that follows it.
Related on Informopedia: China’s 40-technology export control draft, explained and Trump’s new ‘super intelligence’ AI task force.
