CBP's Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee will be holding its quarterly meeting on June 18 in Washington, D.C., according to a Federal Register notice.
CBP has issued a withhold release order against Zhen Fa 7, a Chinese-flagged fishing vessel, amid allegations that the ship uses forced labor to harvest seafood, the agency said in a May 28 release.
Chinese companies on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List are establishing subsidiaries away from Xinjiang to avoid U.S. scrutiny, risk intelligence firm Kharon said May 20.
Thea Lee, head of the Bureau of International Labor Affairs during the Biden administration, complained that the tariff approach of the Trump administration ignores forced labor, and that the Department of Government Efficiency ended all the programs ILAB funded around the world. Those programs aimed to convince local societies to end child labor, to help foreign countries improve working conditions, and they funded research on the best ways to achieve these goals. The grants totaled more than $575 million, and some were scheduled to run through 2026, 2027 or 2028.
The Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) has updated its Due Diligence Reporting Template for forced labor to include an annual due diligence reporting date for suppliers, the company announced in a May 13 release.
A coalition of food producers, including the American Honey Producers Association, the Catfish Farmers of America, the Crawfish Processors Alliance, the Louisiana Farm Bureau Crawfish Committee, and the Southern Shrimp Alliance, sent a letter May 9 asking President Donald Trump to impose tariffs on "unfairly traded imports" of products similar to theirs.
Robert Silvers, a former DHS official who worked on forced labor enforcement, China policy and issues related to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., joined Ropes & Gray. Silvers will co-chair the firm’s national security practice, where he will focus on “critical matters at the intersection of national security, technology, and law,” it said. He left DHS in December after serving as undersecretary for policy and chair of the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force.
The U.K. Supreme Court ruled that a forced labor case against vacuum manufacturer Dyson can proceed in the U.K. in a win for the migrant workers who are suing the company over labor conditions in two Malaysian factories in its supply chains.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of March 17-23, March 23-30, March 31 - April 6, April 7-13, April 14-20 and April 21-27:
Labor advocacy group International Rights Advocates filed a lawsuit this week against Starbucks on behalf of eight individuals who were trafficked and forced to work on "Starbucks-controlled coffee plantations in Brazil." The complaint, brought in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks class certification for all trafficked laborers in Brazil and alleges that Starbucks knowingly benefitted from this slave labor, which took place on thousands of supplier plantations (John Doe I v. Starbucks Corporation, D.D.C. # 25-01261).