As Forced Labor Bill Heads to President, Apparel Trade Groups Ask for Smart Implementation
Now that the bill that would create a rebuttable presumption that goods with Xinjiang inputs were made with forced labor has passed Congress and will likely be signed by President Biden, apparel trade groups and retail trade groups say they're ready to work with the administration on the strategy to implement the law.
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The bill allows for public comment and a public hearing before agencies design a strategy to identify factories outside Xinjiang that accept transferred Uyghur workers, and to trace goods that are made outside the province but have inputs from it. Agencies will have 180 days to write guidance for companies and identify links to forced labor outside the Chinese province; the rebuttable presumption will also begin 180 days after the bill is signed by the president.
"Our members are persistent and unyielding in their efforts to identify, root out, and eliminate traces of forced labor in their supply chains, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is a critical partner to supplement our members’ own due diligence," said a joint statement from the American Apparel and Footwear Association, the National Retail Federation, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the U.S. Fashion Industry Association and the National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones. "This legislation will amplify that partnership by ensuring CBP can effectively and robustly enforce not only the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, but the larger forced labor statute, by using a transparent and evidence-based process based on U.S. jurisprudence to target bad actors. These efforts are essential to effectively stop products made with forced labor from entering the United States.
"We look forward to President Biden quickly signing this bill into law and to working with CBP on crafting a smart, comprehensive, effective, and enforceable strategy to carry it out."
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., led the push in the Senate to get the bill passed, and convinced lead House sponsor Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., to include an instruction to CBP to provide importers with guidance on how to properly conduct due diligence and what sort of evidence is acceptable to prove there is no forced labor in the supply chain of a good. Rubio said on the floor of the Senate just before the bill passed that chamber, "Many companies have already taken steps to clean up their supply chains. And, frankly, they should have no concerns about this law. For those who have not done that, they’ll no longer be able to continue to make Americans -- every one of us, frankly -- unwitting accomplices in the atrocities, in the genocide that’s being committed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai issued a statement after the bill's passage: "This bill represents our country’s commitment to protecting human dignity and leading the fight against forced labor. We have a moral and economic imperative to eliminate this practice from our global supply chains, including those that run through Xinjiang, China, and exploit Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities."