US Lawmakers Seek Additional Safeguards Against Uyghur Forced Labor
For some U.S. lawmakers, keeping forced-labor-tainted goods from entering the country isn’t enough.
On Thursday, Senators Marc Rubio (R-Fl.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) introduced Senate and House versions of a bill that would require the Treasury secretary to instruct the American heads of international financial institutions to oppose loans to projects that pose forced labor risks or involve a state-owned or heavily state-influenced entity, particularly from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
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That’s not all: The No Funds for Forced Labor Act, they said, would require the institutions to not only explain how they vet projects for forced labor red flags but also relate how they track, mitigate and potentially reverse any risks. The Treasury, too, would have to supply a report that lists any projects that international financial institutions have greenlit but may involve forced labor within a year of the law’s enactment and annually for the next five years. It would also have to detail any efforts undertaken by those companies’ executive directors to convince other countries to oppose projects that could utilize forced labor.
“Forced labor is a horrific practice witnessed worldwide,” Rubio said in a statement. “In China, the Chinese Communist Party continues with its grotesque campaign of genocide against Uyghurs and other minorities. We have a moral duty to ensure our nation isn’t tied to any purchases tainted with the forced labor of humans.”
That it would be these legislators to propose the measure isn’t surprising. Wexton has been hawkish on Shein, the Chinese-founded e-tail giant that has been linked to Xinjiang cotton in the past, though it says it no longer sources the fiber from China. Last May, Wexton led a coalition of nearly two dozen House of Representatives members to urge the Securities and Exchange Commission to hold off registering Shein until it can independently certify—“free from state influence”—that it doesn’t employ forced labor from China’s persecuted Muslim minorities. The lawmaker is also behind the Uyghur Forced Labor Disclosure Act, a proposed amendment of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act that would require publicly listed companies to disclose imports of manufactured goods and materials that are sourced in whole or in part from the Xinjiang or through state-sponsored labor transfer schemes trafficking Uyghurs and Turkic ethnic groups to other parts of China.
Rubio and Merkley, for their part, co-authored the legislation that would become the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which for the past two years has imposed a rebuttable presumption that all goods made in whole or in part in Xinjiang are the product of forced labor and therefore barred from the U.S. market under Section 307 of the 1930 Tariff Act. Since 2022, nearly 4,000 shipments valued at $750 million have been turned away under the prohibition, according to Customs and Border Protection. Of these, almost 1,100, worth $23.1 million, involved apparel, footwear and textiles.
Rubio previously wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas calling for an investigation into Shein and its bitter rival Temu for the use of forced labor—something that both have vehemently denied—and to add them to the UFLPA Entity List if they are found to be in violation. Merkley is the co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which has been urging the cross-agency Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force to expand the Entity List and more fully account for bad actors in the supply chain.
“Our tax dollars should never inadvertently go toward projects using forced labor,” Merkley said. “This bipartisan bill builds off our Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act to ensure the United States is not complicit in this horrific human rights abuse. We need to send a strong message against slave labor wherever this evil appears.”
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