The Southern Shrimp Alliance announced it has filed a formal allegation with CBP that shrimp harvested in Argentina and processed in China by Qingdao Yize should be barred from entry into the U.S. because, it argues, Uyghur workers have been transferred to processing plants in Shandong province.
A House subcommittee hearing on the government's implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act zoomed in on de minimis shipments, low incidence of cotton isotopic testing and the slow pace of adding businesses to the UFLPA Entity List, which captures companies that accept labor transfers outside of Xinjiang.
Kharon signed a contract with CBP that will give CBP enforcement officers and investigators "access" to Kharon's "global risk analytics" platform, Kharon said in a news release Oct. 18. The CBP's use of the platform will assist the agency with its "investigations that focus on the networks of foreign actors tied to forced labor and other security threats," Kharon said. CBP did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
Of more than 5,000 shipments stopped by CBP under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, CBP has finished its analysis on about 4,600. And for nearly half, or 47%, importers were able to prove there was no link to Xinjiang in their supply chains, said Brian Hoxie, director of CBP's forced labor division.
The European Parliament's Internal Market and International Trade committees adopted a draft regulation that would provide a framework for investigating the use of forced labor in global supply chains and bans all goods using forced labor, the parliament announced. If the investigation of a company reveals the use of forced labor, the European Parliament said, "all import and export of the related goods would be halted at the EU's borders and companies would also have to withdraw goods that have already reached the EU market." Goods that had reached the market would be "donated, recycled or destroyed."
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is one of the most powerful laws, "in what it's been able to achieve in such a short time," said Howard Mendelsohn, chief client officer for Kharon, a risk intelligence service provider. It was implemented so quickly that almost $2 billion worth of imports has been detained, at least temporarily.
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A nonprofit organization that fights illicit networks that threaten global peace and security, C4ADS, is recommending that the Department of Homeland Security’s interagency Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force should place Xinjiang Nonferrous Metal Industry Group and its subsidiaries on the UFLPA entity list, as the group laid out evidence that the mines use labor transfers of Turkic minorities in Xinjiang province.
House Select Committee on China Chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., led a bipartisan letter signed by a dozen other House members asking National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator Richard Spinrad to "strongly consider enforcing trade restrictions against the PRC on specific seafood products tainted by forced labor," such as tuna and squid. China's government has the right to 90 days of consultations on the issue before the administration imposes trade restrictions.
Trade lawyers and importers are wondering how the anti-stockpiling element of a two-year pause on trade remedy circumvention deposits will be enforced.