The Supply Chain Agreement, one of the pillars of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, will ask participating countries to work together to:
While the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and other factors have led to uncertainty and a "more complex risk environment" for imports, some companies have found strategies to "effectively navigate" this environment, law firm Bradley said in a new blog post. Some of those strategies included being "proactive" in engaging their original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), in developing "internal protocols" to monitor their supply chains, in incorporating "traceability audits," in finding "backup sourcing" and in shifting risk of "non-performance" to "downstream parties" or OEMs, Bradley said.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., back in the Capitol after the August break, told International Trade Today that he'll "have more to say about" his committee's investigation on forced labor in auto supply chains "before too long."
Allegations that Diesel Canada, Hugo Boss Canada and Walmart Canada purchase garments that were made in part with Uyghur forced labor -- complaints that rely on Australian Strategic Policy Institute reporting in 2020 and Sheffield Hallam University reports -- will progress to a fact-finding investigation after the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) found that the companies' responses weren't satisfactory.
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China exports squid and tuna to the U.S. from its distant water fishing fleet, which "is characterized by numerous reported incidents of forced labor. The majority of the crew on board the vessels in this fleet are migrant workers from Indonesia and the Philippines, who are particularly vulnerable to forced labor," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a report to Congress sent last week. This was the first time that the report on illegal fishing, which comes out every two years, covered forced labor.
After getting data on 86 garments tested by CBP between December 2022 and May 2023, Reuters determined that 13 of the items, or 15% of the total, showed they contained cotton grown in Xinjiang, and therefore are banned from entry to the U.S.
Contractual language against forced labor may not be enough to meet increasing supply chain due diligence regulations, particularly as the EU implements its corporate sustainability due diligence directive (see 2202230073 and 2306010022), Ernst & Young advisers said this week. Although there is still debate about how broadly the bloc’s new rules will be scoped, the advisers warned companies against blinding themselves to rising government expectations.
Four witnesses asked Congress to pass Level the Playing Field Act 2.0, a proposal that would change trade remedy laws in favor of domestic manufacturers, at a House hearing called the "Chinese Communist Party Threat to American Manufacturing."
CBP now plans on deploying its automation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act detention process in January, according to the agency’s most recent ACE development and deployment schedule, released Aug. 30. The entry for “Automation of CBP Form 6051D for Detentions of Cargo Filed in ACE, including Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Detentions” had previously been listed with a deployment date as TBD, after CBP delayed the deployment this past May (see 2305090071). CBP has said the capability would create an automated process for UFLPA admissibility reviews and exception requests.