U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s enforcement actions against goods suspected of being made with forced labor could ramp up under a new law, but first importers have an opportunity to tell federal officials how they’re being affected and seek improvements.
Importers have consistently said they support the U.S. prohibition on imports of forced labor goods, but they have a number of longstanding complaints about CBP’s enforcement process. For example, a recent filing in a court case challenging CBP on this issue argued that the agency “routinely ignores exculpatory evidence provided by importers, provides no rationale why such evidence is deficient, makes exhaustive documentation requests then complains that it gets too much information, and fails to disclose enforcement targets, or the evidence used to identify those targets, so the industry can avoid those bad supply chain actors.”
However, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act signed into law Dec. 23, 2021, gives importers an opportunity to possibly influence future enforcement efforts. This law, which basically prohibits imports of all goods made in whole or in part from any material from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, also requires a federal Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force to develop a strategy to prevent the importation of forced labor goods from China.
