US govt. employee banned from leaving China
A State Department spokesperson told NHK on Monday, "We are tracking this case very closely and are engaged with Chinese officials to resolve the situation as quickly as possible."
The Patent and Trademark Office is a federal agency under the US Department of Commerce.
The Washington Post has reported that the employee is a Chinese American man, who traveled to China several months ago to visit family.
The paper said the man is being prevented from leaving China after he failed to disclose on his visa application that he worked for the US government.
A female executive of major US bank Wells Fargo has also been blocked from leaving China.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Monday that the woman "is involved in a criminal case currently being handled by Chinese law-enforcement authorities and is subject to exit restrictions."
The spokesperson added that "anyone, Chinese and foreigners alike, should abide by Chinese laws in China."
Reuters news agency said Wells Fargo has suspended all employee travel to China in response to the incident.
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The Diplomat
5 hours ago
- The Diplomat
International Labor Standards: The Missing Link in China-US Trade Negotiations
The China-U.S. trade war is often reduced to a dispute over cheap exports, but the real fault line runs deeper. China has built a powerful industrial strategy on the backs of low-cost labor and state-backed incentives, successfully attracting advanced multinationals and bringing their technology and supply chain resources into the country. While the United States outsourced its basic manufacturing, China turned so-called 'low-end' jobs into a launchpad for dominating high-value industries. This strategy has worked. BYD, once a low-tier battery maker, is now a top global electric vehicle manufacturer, beating Tesla in worldwide EV sales. Apple, for its part, poured billions into China – not just in assembly lines, but in R&D. As journalist Peter McGee documented in 'Apple and the Transformation of Chinese Manufacturing,' Apple's strict quality and engineering standards forced Chinese suppliers to level up. What began as low-cost outsourcing became a sophisticated, self-reinforcing innovation engine. This has become a key driver of innovation and global competitiveness in China's manufacturing sector. As the Chinese government aligned its labor policies with the profit motives of U.S. corporations, Washington debated tariffs. All this while, companies continue to rely on China's cheap labor to meet shareholder demands. China, in turn, gained leverage: any disruption to this arrangement would threaten the survival of many global brands. This entanglement has become so tight that it indirectly but powerfully shapes U.S. policy toward China, through the commercial interests and logistical dependence of American companies operating in China. But there's a darker cost buried in the foundations of this success. For over two decades, China Labor Watch has uncovered systemic labor issues in the supply chains of major U.S. and global brands operating in China. These are not isolated incidents, but are structural features of a model that exploits rural migrant workers, tolerates weak enforcement of labor laws, and prohibits independent unions. Global companies continue to profit from it. This exploitation does not just serve short-term commercial interests. It underpins China's ambitious vision of the 'great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation' and advancing its global hegemonic strategy of technological dominance and leadership. Even as parts of manufacturing move to Southeast Asia, those operations remain closely tethered to Chinese supply chains. The low-cost advantage remains China's unshakable core. If the U.S. wants to reduce its dependency and rebalance trade on fairer terms, it cannot ignore the labor question. It must confront China's labor governance head-on – even if doing so challenges American business interests in the short term. The Chinese government, for all its claims in its Constitution and the Communist Party's charter that China is a 'socialist state' that is 'led by the working class,' has built its economic ascent on the backs of exploited workers. While it publicly touts its commitment to workers' well-being, it has never admitted to the systemic nature of labor violations. Instead, the party-state continues to sidestep the issue through an official narrative of 'striving for workers' well-being,' and blame is deflected to multinational corporations. Many Chinese citizens, including some government officials, genuinely believe that the CCP's system can improve workers' lives. The structural roots of labor exploitation, inherent in the party's governance and economic model, are obscured. Labor rights activism thus becomes a sore subject for the government. To them, it is not just about a call for better wages or working conditions, but a direct challenge to the CCP's self-image. It exposes the ideological gulf between its promises and the lived experience of Chinese workers. If party leaders deny the existence of labor exploitation, they are telling an outright lie that will anger many workers; if they address the issue, it legitimizes that reality is at odds with the CCP's charter. This is precisely why labor advocates are treated with suspicion and often repression – but also some degree of caution. During the 2015 '709 Crackdown,' China jailed dozens of human rights lawyers, but took a softer approach with labor activists, quietly releasing them or assigning them jobs after detention to avoid international attention further escalating the issue. The goal was clear: to suppress attention and not provoke an international firestorm. A similar pattern played out in 2025, when Brazil sued BYD for alleged forced labor. Instead of lashing out at international critics, as it often does in response to human rights issues, China responded discreetly and promised an investigation. These examples reflect the nuance and sensitivity that the government applies to labor issues, as compared to human rights issues that it often rebuts. This different approach underscores the potential for labor issues to compel government action and, in turn, how international labor standards can be used as a tool for change. In other words, for the Chinese government, labor conditions resonate where abstract human rights appeals do not. From factory workers to office employees, the majority of China's workforce faces long hours, low wages, and little social protection. Labor violations aren't theoretical; they are everyday realities that could fuel domestic pressure and policy reform if exposed. Tools to address these problems already exist. In the United States, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) and Section 307 of the Tariff Act have led to meaningful enforcement actions, even if many Uyghur workers are rarely found in primary factories supplying to the U.S. In the future, as additions to the UFLPA entity list are expected to slow, U.S. enforcement could shift toward broader supply chain interventions through the Withhold Release Orders (WROs), further expanding to address forced labor issues in supply chains, using enforcement to promote fairer labor standards. Yet despite the tools at Washington's disposal, labor concerns remain sidelined in mainstream trade discussions, drowned out by debates over tariffs, trade deficits, and subsidies. These traditional tools have struggled to move the needle on Chinese economic policy, which is largely built upon China's persistent low labor cost advantage. Labor, by contrast, is a pressure point the Chinese government is less prepared to resist, precisely because it implicates both the CCP's legitimacy and its economic model. Labor issues directly affect the immediate interests of the Chinese people, which concerns the government, and international labor standards can thus serve as an effective mechanism to expose the deeply rooted structural flaws in China's governance model. This is the moment for the United States and its allies in Europe to unite around labor standards as a strategic pillar of trade policy. As China-EU tensions continue to simmer, a coordinated, transatlantic approach, through shared standards, trade mechanisms, and enforcement frameworks, could significantly increase leverage over China's labor practices. This strategy not only advances sustainable global supply chains but also balances immediate commercial interests with long-term labor equity, benefiting workers in both the United States and China. Yes, there will be obstacles: political division among allies, corporate resistance, and China's likely counterattacks. But the stakes are too high to ignore. Fair labor standards not only strengthen global supply chains; they offer a pathway to a more just global economy, one where competitiveness does not rely on exploitation. Reshaping the rules of global trade will require more than rhetoric. It will require placing workers – American, Chinese, and others – at the center of policy. And that begins with recognizing that labor is not a side issue. It is the issue.
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Amid Epstein furor, Ghislaine Maxwell seeks relief from U.S. Supreme Court
Even as an uproar over files relating to Jeffrey Epstein engulfs President Donald Trump and Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court is due to wade into the controversy and decide whether to hear a bid by an associate of the late financier and convicted sex offender to overturn her criminal conviction. The justices, now on their summer recess, are expected in late September to consider whether to take up an appeal by British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence after being found guilty in 2021 by a jury in New York of helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls. Maxwell's lawyers have told the Supreme Court that her conviction was invalid because a non-prosecution and plea agreement that federal prosecutors had made with Epstein in Florida in 2007 also shielded his associates and should have barred her criminal prosecution in New York. Her lawyers have a Monday deadline for filing their final written brief in their appeal to the court. Some legal experts see merit in Maxwell's claim, noting that it touches on an unsettled matter of U.S. law that has divided some of the nation's regional federal appeals courts, known as circuit courts. Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said there is a chance that the Supreme Court takes up the case, and noted the disagreement among appeals courts. Such a split among circuit courts can be a factor when the nation's top judicial body considers whether or not to hear a case. "The question of whether a plea agreement from one U.S. Attorney's Office binds other federal prosecution as a whole is a serious issue that has split the circuits," Epner said. While uncommon, "there have been several cases presenting the issue over the years," Epner added. Trump's Justice Department appeared to acknowledge the circuit split in a brief filed to the justices this month, but urged them to reject the appeal. Any disparity among lower court rulings "is of limited importance," Solicitor-General D. John Sauer wrote in the brief, "because the scope of a plea or similar agreement is under the control of the parties to the agreement." If the Supreme Court opts to grant Maxwell's appeal, it would hear arguments during its new term that begins in October, with a ruling then expected by the end of next June. Trump and his administration have been facing mounting pressure from his supporters to release additional information about the Justice Department's investigation into Epstein, who hanged himself in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell, an autopsy concluded, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer to Trump, met with Maxwell in Florida on Thursday in what her lawyer called "a very productive day." The administration reversed course this month on its pledge to release more documents about Epstein, prompting fury among some of Trump's most loyal followers. The Epstein case has long been the subject of conspiracy theories, considering his rich and powerful friends and the circumstances of his death. The Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump during his first term in office. Whether the court would want to take on such a case that represents a political landmine is an open question. The justices hear relatively few cases — about 70 out of more than 4,000 appeals filed at the court each year — and have broad discretion to choose which ones will be on their docket. At least four of the justices must agree in order for the court to take up a case. Maxwell's appeal focuses on a deal Epstein struck in 2007 to avoid federal prosecution in part by pleading guilty to state criminal offenses in Florida of soliciting prostitution and soliciting minors to engage in prostitution. Epstein then served 13 months in a minimum-security state facility. In 2019, during Trump's first term as president, the U.S. Justice Department charged Epstein in Manhattan with sex trafficking of minors. Epstein pleaded not guilty, but died by suicide before the trial at age 66. Maxwell was arrested in 2020 and convicted the following year after being accused by federal prosecutors of recruiting and grooming girls to have sexual encounters with Epstein between 1994 and 2004. Maxwell failed to convince a trial judge and the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to throw out her conviction based on the 2007 non-prosecution agreement, which stated that "the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein." In the appeal to the Supreme Court, Maxwell's lawyer David Markus said that in its reference to co-conspirators, the Epstein agreement had no geographic limit on where the non-prosecution agreement could be enforced. "If the government can promise one thing and deliver another — and courts let it happen — that erodes the integrity of the justice system," Markus said. "This isn't just about Ghislaine Maxwell. It's about whether the government is held to its word," Markus said. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has urged the Supreme Court to hear Maxwell's appeal given the prevalence of plea agreements in the U.S. criminal justice system and to ensure that the government keeps its promises. The group represents thousands of private lawyers, public defenders, law professors and judges nationwide. It said in a filing to the justices that the lack of a geographic limitation means "no part of the Department of Justice may institute criminal charges against any co-conspirator in any district." Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman, an expert in criminal law, said it was unusual for the U.S. attorney in Florida to include protection for co-conspirators in the agreement to not prosecute Epstein. That peculiarity might be reason enough for the Supreme Court to avoid the matter, Richman said, as it renders the case a poor vehicle for resolving whether pleas in one court district bind actions in all other court districts. "There were many strange things about this deal," Richman said, which will cut against the Supreme Court's interest in taking up Maxwell's appeal. Richman said he hoped the political fallout would not play into the Supreme Court's decision on whether to hear Maxwell's appeal. If it does, Richman said, taking up the case could allow Maxwell to avoid cooperating with the government and dodge responsibility. "A decision that would allow Maxwell to protect herself probably would not be something they would be interested in," Richman said of the Supreme Court justices.
