Importers are hoping that the guidance from the federal government on how to comply with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act will help identify Chinese firms that are outside of Xinjiang but employ Uyghur or other minority Muslim workers through China's "poverty alleviation" programs. Goods from those factories will be presumed to be made with forced labor, but customs advisers from KPMG said identifying that nexus to forced labor in your supply chain is even more challenging than seeing if you have Xinjiang inputs several tiers down in your supply chain.
Senators on the committee that oversees trade pressed U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai repeatedly on why the administration isn't engaged in negotiations with other countries to get them to lower their tariffs, so that U.S. exporters, particularly agricultural producers, can gain more market share. Both Democrats and Republicans questioned the decision to pursue the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework as something other than a traditional free trade agreement,
A withhold release order on Chinese polysilicon remains the major concern for the U.S. solar industry, despite recently opened anti-circumvention inquiries that could result in the imposition of antidumping and countervailing duties on solar modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam and CBP’s implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, according to a market research report released by BofA Securities March 29.
As CBP works to implement the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, its champion, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told International Trade Today he's concerned that CBP will not strictly enforce the law, which says that any good with any input from China's Xinjiang region is assumed to contain forced labor.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
A leading voice in the House behind the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act introduced a bipartisan bill that would remove permanent normal trade relations from China and instead would require annual affirmations from the administration that "the Chinese government is making serious and sustained improvement in respecting human rights" in order to retain most-favored-nation tariffs.
The Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force will hold a public hearing on April 8, DHS said in a notice. The hearing is a requirement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which also requires consideration of public comments on how to implement the law (see 2201210031, 2203150037 and 2203100044). "The hearing will consider measures that can be taken to trace the origin of goods, offer greater supply chain transparency, and identify third country supply chain routes for goods mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part with forced labor in [China], as well as other measures for ensuring that such goods" don't enter the U.S., it said.
The Forced Labor Working Group (FLWG), an ad hoc group of retail and fashion industries, “proposes a holistic and collaborative multi-faceted framework” for enforcing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) “that will meet U.S. jurisprudence and due process requirements.” The proposal includes keeping a public database of bad actors and the tainted import goods they’re associated with, the FLWG said, in docket DHS-2022-0001. The group was created by the American Apparel and Footwear Association, the National Retail Federation, the Retail Industry Leaders Association and the U.S. Fashion Industry Association.
CBP should recognize imports of goods under the $800 de minimis threshold as entries, as a way to help prevent low value goods made with forced labor from coming into the U.S., the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America said in comments to DHS on implementing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. "By treating the commercial de minimis exemption instead as an entry of merchandise, the Government can continue to promote the administrative ease that section 321 affords legitimate gift and personal use shipments, while also ensuring goods imported under the commercial de minimis exemption are eligible and admissible and pose no threat to our country’s economy, safety, health, or security and particularly are free of forced labor," the trade group said.
Though the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) designates polysilicon as a “high-priority enforcement sector,” the polysilicon produced in Xinjiang, and elsewhere in China, “currently does not meet the extremely high levels of purity required for semiconductor-grade polysilicon,” the Semiconductor Industry Association commented in docket DHS-2022-0001. The comments were in response to a DHS notice on how best to comply with UFLPA measures for preventing goods produced with forced labor in China from being imported into the U.S. CBP, under the direction of the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), is scheduled to begin enforcing the statute’s “rebuttable presumption” measures June 21.