Combating Forced Labor in Line With Trump Administration's Policies, Experts Argue
Despite the Trump administration's aversion to government, continuing to combat forced labor is in line with its goals of assisting U.S. manufacturing, experts argued during a March 25 event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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In addition to the "moral imperative" of combating forced labor in U.S. supply chains, there are "core security imperatives, [and] core economic imperatives," said Whitley Saumweber, the director of the CSIS Stephenson Ocean Security Project. If "we care about free markets, if we care about fair competition for U.S. companies, if we care about national security and competition with China, with Russia, with others of our major competitors in the global marketplace of ideas," then the U.S. should make combating forced labor a priority.
CSIS recently published a report, authored in part by Saumweber, which highlighted the need for the U.S. government to coordinate and consolidate its various efforts to combat forced labor.
Karen Stauss of Transparentem, a nonprofit that investigates labor abuses in global supply chains, agreed that combating forced labor is in the U.S.'s economic interest, saying that "bad labor practices in the product mean that America, other American businesses, are potentially competing with this unfair business because their costs are lower because they're engaged in serious labor abuses, including forced labor."
She also said that the U.S. government has statutory authority to criminally prosecute firms that knowingly use products made by forced labor in their supply chains. Companies that "knowingly benefited from participating in that venture, and ... knowingly or recklessly disregarded the presence of forced labor within that venture" could be criminally liable, should the government decide to prosecute. She acknowledged that this has yet to be tried in court, but said that it is a "pretty simple, basic concept."
Saumweber acknowledged that his recommendations would require a "strong directive, preferentially from the White House, that this kind of enterprise is critical to US interests," and said that, in the current administration's "moment of deconstruction," that this would be unlikely to happen. It "feels a little bit ironic" that "we're presenting a report about good governance and construction" in this environment, he said, but maintained that it "couldn't be more critical."
Stauss said that the Trump administration brings "a further risk of political interference with the criminal process" of combating forced labor, which she called "extremely destructive to efforts to create accountability." There is a risk that "specifically favored companies" might not be subject to prosecution. In particular, she highlighted CBP's recent lifting of the WRO against Dominican sugar company Central Romana (see 2503190071).
"The lack of communication around a case like that really increases the concern that maybe there haven't been improvements ... ," she said, Otherwise, why hasn't it been spoken about publicly?"