Trade Committee Leaders Worry CBP Cannot Enforce the WRO on XPCC Cotton
The head of the House Ways and Means Committee, along with the chairman and a senior member of the Trade Subcommittee, said Dec. 3 that they “have deep concerns about CBP’s ability” to effectively enforce a withhold release order on cotton produced by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (see 2012030021). As evidence, they cited a recent Government Accountability Office report on CBP enforcement of imports of goods made with forced labor that was not publicly released.
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“While today’s WRO on cotton produced by the XPCC is a step in the right direction regarding the deplorable, inhumane treatment of Uyghurs and other minority Muslim populations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, it is clearly not enough. This WRO will only affect one sector, even though it is well documented that forced labor is rampant across Xinjiang and in a wide range of sectors,” said Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass.; Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.; and Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. Because of that, they called on the Senate to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (see 2012010047), which would create a presumption of forced labor for all exports from Xinjiang. They called that bill “a much more aggressive and targeted approach to combating forced labor in China.”
They also said they believe that President-elect Joe Biden will do a better job on forced labor enforcement.