Robust White House Action Broadened The Net For National Security Enforcement

As the year came to a close, the Kharon Brief asked a range of industry leaders to assess 2025's biggest storylines and what's coming in 2026 in sanctions, risk and compliance.

Looking back: The defining feature of national security enforcement in 2025 was the unprecedented speed with which White House policy priorities moved from announcement to action, with Treasury designations and criminal prosecutions deployed to test and enforce those changes almost immediately. Two structural developments reinforced this shift.

First, the creation of the Trade Fraud Task Force signaled a more aggressive, intelligence-driven approach to customs fraud, country-of-origin manipulation and tariff evasion—particularly where trade fraud functions as a workaround to export controls or sanctions. Second, NSPM-7, aimed at countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence, expanded the national-security lens inward. It increased scrutiny of advocacy activity,