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U.S. adds products to list at risk of Uyghur forced labor
1 of 2 | A child sits on the ground in the city of Kashgar in western China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region during a government organized trip for foreign journalists, in 2021. U.S. officials said Tuesday they are broadening the categories of products that will be subject to additional scrutiny under the Uyghur Forced Labor Act. File Photo Wu Hong/EPA
Aug. 19 (UPI) -- The United States Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday it was expanding its strategy to block imports of Chinese products made with forced labor by members of the Uyghur minority group.
The department has added steel, copper, lithium, caustic soda and red dates to its list of sectors that receive heightened scrutiny because they have been deemed to be at higher risk of having been made by forced Uyghur labor. The move is the latest by U.S. officials in recent years to pressure China over its treatment of the Muslim minority Uyghurs in its northwestern Xinjiang region.
"America has a moral, economic, and national security duty to eradicate threats that endanger our nation's prosperity, including unfair trade practices that disadvantage the American people and stifle our economic growth," Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Act was signed into law in 2021 by then-President Joe Biden in response to reports of human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region. The law bans products made in the region from entering the United States under the presumption they were made by ethnic Uyghurs who were pressured into working into labor-intensive industries under the threat of detention.
After the law took effect, the Biden administration blacklisted over 100 Chinese-based companies from importing their products into the United States over alleged violations.
Officials have also added aluminum, apparel, seafood, polyvinyl chloride and others to the list of sectors at greater risk of using forced labor in the region.
In a report to Congress, the department described their rationale for adding the new sectors to its list. The report cites official Chinese documents that prioritize the production of steel, lithium and copper in the Xinjiang region.
China produces 40 percent of the world's red dates, with half of that coming from Xinjiang, according to the report. Red dates are intercropped with cotton, which is well documented as being at high risk of forced labor practices," the report states. The production of caustic soda in the region also has been tied to the use of forced labor, according to the report.
Earlier in this year, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio put visa restrictions on officials in Thailand who were accused of forcibly returning 40 Uyghurs from Thailand to China.
