One in Five Cotton Household Items Tainted by Forced Labor
Despite the government’s efforts to stem the flow of Xinjiang cotton products into the U.S., they’re still making their way into the hands of consumers. One in five cotton products in the average American household contains fibers harvested with forced labor.
That startling statistic persists even amid the federal government’s attempts to tighten China’s access to the U.S. market, according to MeiLin Wan, vice president of textile sales for Applied DNA Sciences. The DNA authentication firm’s recent reporting showed that the supply chain for cotton textiles and apparel is still woefully marred by the presence of Xinjiang cotton.
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The group, which was represented by Wan on a podcast released by the National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) on Monday, provides cotton textile traceability solutions including isotope testing, which shows where cotton was grown, and PCR DNA testing to provide information about how it was farmed, among other characteristics.
“Since 20 percent of the world’s cotton is grown primarily in the Xinjiang region, it’s really critical that apparel brands and their manufacturers know their supply chains—and this means everything from the bale of fiber to the finished product,” Wan said. “The basic question is, ‘Can you prove it? How do you prove it?’”
It’s a question that has become all the more critical since the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) took effect in 2022. A little over two years since its implementation, both the industry and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are still working out the kinks when it comes to compliance and enforcement.
On the brand side, the requirements to prove that shipments are compliant with the law are murky, with brands dreading detentions at ports and borders. And for CBP, there remain “serious issues regarding UFLPA enforcement,” Wan added.
“Millions of goods coming in as a result of the de minimis loophole are causing real problems with enforcing forced labor in supply chains,” the VP of sales said. “If there are solar panels, cotton products, automotive parts also on the list, how can Customs and Border Protection do all of those things and be expected to be effective in their enforcement?”
While certain types of genetic tagging have been around for more than a decade, they have advanced significantly, and are beginning to play a bigger role in both tracing supply chains and unearthing forced labor violations, Wan said.
Typically, a DNA tag would be applied to the fiber at the gin level, but now, it can be done at the spinning location using the company’s technology. “This enables everyone in the supply chain to know that at the point at which it was tagged, that it stays not only on the cotton—but it actually allows you to link that cotton to the supplier and to the supply chain.”
Visibility into the chain of custody serves to reinforce brand claims around their cotton supply—whether it was farmed regeneratively, whether it is organic, or whether it’s been certified by a third party. “It can help protect your brand. It can help protect the supply chain, and ultimately protects the consumer, because then there’s a way to prove…you are actually doing what you say you’re doing,” Wan added.
It’s not just about getting a gold star from shoppers, though. A study conducted between February 2023 and March of 2024, in which 800 samples ranging from cotton socks, swabs tea towels, fabrics, finished garments, home textiles and industrial textiles were tested, revealed that 19 percent, or roughly one-fifth, contained Xinjiang cotton.
Wan said the “alarming percentage” was especially notable given that traces of illicit cotton were found across such a wide assortment of goods. “There needs to be some serious attention on importers and retailers…providing evidence that they do not have Xinjiang cotton in their supply chains,” she said. Simply buying products from a different country of origin is no guarantee that the cotton is clean; increasingly, Xinjiang cotton is being found in product hailing from Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, she said.
“When you walk around your house and you see the number of cotton products that you have, that you’re using on a daily basis—that’s one in five products,” she reiterated. “That’s not a slight issue. This is a serious issue.”
Beyond scientific and technological solutions, tightening regulations is essential, she believes. “I would point to the de minimis loophole as something that needs to be addressed as soon as possible,” Wan added. “The fact that the millions of goods that come in per day under de minimis are not subject to duties, and secondly, not checked, is harmful to the industry as a whole, harmful to all the businesses, and harmful to American consumers.”
As trade tensions continue to percolate, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are looking at myriad ways to control China’s influence on the American market.
This week, coined “China Week” on The Hill, House lawmakers will vote on more than two-dozen bills aimed at reining in Beijing, from one that would prohibit China-made EVs and batteries from receiving tax credits to another that would limit the ability of Chinese individuals and companies to purchase farmland in the U.S. Other bills take on election interference, Chinese drone surveillance, aggression toward Taiwan and currency manipulation.
According to Emily Kilcrease, senior fellow and director of the Energy, Economics and Security Program at Center for a New American Security, cutting China off from U.S. consumers and businesses might not yield the benefits lawmakers are hoping for, especially when it comes to technology.
Of tech titans like Tik Tok as well as e-tailers like Shein and Temu, she said, “I think that the way you can connect the dots across those cases is that when there is this unexpected emergence of a major Chinese tech player, whether it’s a software based e-commerce provider or whether it’s in actual manufacturing of hard goods, policymakers just grab for whatever tool is available to them to try to stem the perceived economic or security harms,” she said during a webinar with the Center for American Progress. “That’s the common thread between them—whether [the tool is] de minimis or something else.”
But when it comes to certain advanced technologies, like ones that could help in the movement toward green energy, thumbing a nose at Chinese producers might only serve to inhibit that sector’s growth.
“China is a leading producer of these technologies, and there’s this lack of clarity on how we think about de-risking alongside—and potentially in tension with—other goals, like the climate transition,” she explained. “That’s a big, tangled knot that we haven’t totally figured out how to unweave here yet.”
The same goes for manifold industries where the U.S. is flush with expertise and technology but lacks the ability to produce at scale. “There’s this whole manufacturing capacity aspect of things, where China does have an advantage in some respects,” she said when talking about the production of chips. “The U.S. is trying to figure out how to, in essence, re-industrialize parts of these key supply chains in the United States, whether it’s for an economic argument or…more often a security argument.”
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