The House Select Committee on China is investigating U.S. investment firms BlackRock and index provider MSCI for their “decisions” that led to Americans investing savings into “dozens of blacklisted Chinese companies,” including entities that contribute to China’s human rights abuses, the committee said this week. In letters to the two firms, committee leaders said their investment-related decisions have resulted in Americans “unwittingly funding” Chinese entities building weapons for the country's military and contributing to the government's goal for “technological supremacy.”
CBP awarded Altana a “multi-year contract” to map supply chains for the agency for CBP’s use in addressing forced labor, the company said in a news release July 20. “This new award expands Altana’s relationship with CBP to help enable CBP officers and analysts to quickly understand the complexities of rapidly-shifting global supply chains, all using Altana’s Atlas,” Altana said. “The Atlas will assist CBP officers and analysts to analyze highly messy data at scale, harness artificial intelligence to triage and prioritize actions, and collaborate across borders to stop the flow of goods created by forced labor,” it said. CBP did not immediately comment.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., reintroduced a bill that could impose “secondary sanctions” on companies doing business with entities that have been sanctioned for Uyghur-related human rights abuse in China’s Xinjiang region. The Sanctioning Supporters of Slave Labor Act, which was also introduced last year (see 2208020061), aims to better hold companies “accountable” for doing business with businesses tied to forced labor, Rubio said July 19. He said companies that “continue to do business with these sanctioned entities can still access the U.S. financial system,” adding that “not only should China’s genocidal regime answer for the crimes they are committing but also the companies that profit from these atrocities.”
A State Department official this week denied allegations that the agency has held back sanctions and export controls in an effort to limit damage to the U.S.-China relationship, saying the Biden administration continues to enforce a range of human rights-related trade restrictions against Beijing. But the official also said the administration hasn’t yet imposed mandatory sanctions under the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 and was accused by at least one lawmaker of failing to comply with a congressional subpoena that sought information on sanctions against China.
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Canada launched investigations of Nike Canada and Dynasty Gold this week after receiving complaints that both companies’ supply chains have ties to forced labor in China. A Canadian agency said it’s probing allegations that Nike has “supply relationships” with Chinese companies that use Uyghur forced labor and that Dynasty Gold, a mining company, benefited from Uyghur forced labor at a Chinese mine in which it had a majority stake.
One of the leaders in the move to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act recently introduced a new bill that would require the administration to produce an annual report on foreign persons "found facilitating the exploitation of child labor" in the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and would instruct the administration to impose sanctions on those individuals.
A European human rights advocacy group recently filed a complaint with the German government against BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen alleging the three automakers aren’t meeting German Supply Chain Act due diligence requirements that their supply chains are free from forced labor.
Countries in the Five Eyes Alliance, plus Japan, have issued a joint declaration on non-market practices and trade related economic coercion that they say "undermine the functioning of and confidence in the rules-based multilateral trading system by distorting trade, investment, and competition and harming relations between countries."
The U.S.-European Union Trade and Technology Council could soon begin prioritizing China issues over Russia, which has dominated much of the group’s time since it was established in 2021, said Frances Burwell, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. She also said the TTC should focus more of its energy on investment screening, particularly as both sides consider a new tool to screen certain outbound investments (see 2305110033).