Rubio Asks Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force to Add CATL to UFLPA Entity List
Five Republican senators, led by Marco Rubio of Florida, are asking the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force to add Contemporary Amperex Technology, Co. Limited (CATL) and its supplier and former subsidiary Xinjiang Zhicun Lithium to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list.
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In an Aug. 10 letter to the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Rubio wrote: "CATL has a direct supply relationship with Xinjiang Zhicun Lithium -- a company which it previously owned. Although CATL has officially divested Xinjiang Zhicun Lithium, it appears to exercise significant control or guidance over the company’s operations through a series of holding companies and through a former senior manager of CATL, Guan Chaoyu. The full details of CATL’s lithium supply chain are obscure, but the continuing relationship between CATL and Xinjiang Zhicun Lithium suggests CATL products containing lithium imported into the U.S. warrant scrutiny if not seizure."
Products suspected of containing forced labor are detained, not seized; importers can send them back to where they came from, or to another market.
The senators said Xinjiang Zhicun Lithium and its vendor TBEA Company employ Uyghurs who were sent to their factories through labor transfer programs. "The laborers in these programs are, in many cases, transferred directly from detention facilities to factories and subjected to stifling surveillance," they wrote.
They said the only way CATL does not belong on the entity list is if "the task force can find clear and convincing evidence that CATL or any of its subsidiaries no longer does any of the following:
- Sources lithium from the XUAR;
- Exercises meaningful control or influence over Xinjiang Zhicun Lithium; and
- Participates in Uyghur labor transfer programs."
The chairmen of the House Select Committee on China and the House Ways and Means Committee raised similar issues in July (see 2307210072) with the Ford Company. Ford is in a licensing deal with CATL so it can use CATL electric vehicle battery designs in its Michigan production.
Researchers at Sheffield Hallam University (see 2305150034) said in May that CATL operates in Xinjiang.
Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Braun of Indiana and J.D. Vance of Ohio are the letter's other signers.