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A Loophole is Allowing Slave-Made Goods into the U.S. We Must Close It.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)
May 9, 2023
Newsweek
December 16, 2021, was a historic day. A deeply divided and polarized Congress united to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) by a near-unanimous vote. It demonstrated a national commitment to stand in solidarity with persecuted ethnic groups in China and ensure that Americans—producers and consumers alike—do not inadvertently support slavery….
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has already halted more than 3,500 shipments with potential ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s slave labor camps and denied almost 500 of them entry into the U.S…. It’s a start, but it is not enough…. [S]ome Chinese companies have discovered they can get past CBP by flying under America’s de minimis import value for regulation….
The UFLPA…is subject to the Obama-era Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, which instructs U.S. customs agents to “admit free from duty and tax shipments of merchandise…having an aggregate fair retail value in the country of shipment of not more than $800.” In plain English, CBP will not inspect Chinese-made goods that do not exceed the value of $800….
Outlets like the fast fashion giant Shein escape inspection by selling cheap goods, none of which amount to $800 on their own, directly to Americans. According to the Human Trafficking Legal Center, Shein and other companies like it use “Xinjiang cotton in their low-value shipments being sent to the United States.” Knowingly or not, Americans who purchase from these companies are supporting the enslavement of Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic and religious minorities….
Moving forward, we must reevaluate our nation’s de minimis standards…. We also must crack down on platforms like Temu, which facilitates direct-to-consumer transactions between Chinese companies and American consumers…. There is broad, bipartisan agreement that goods made by slave labor have no place in our country. We just need the political will to come together like we did in 2021 and do what is right.