(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Do forced labour bans protect workers in supply chains? [1] [] Date: 2025-09 This non-enforcement ended after the Obama administration persuaded Congress to repeal this exception in 2015, signalling the additional purpose of ending forced labour worldwide. But the protectionist origins of section 307 remained. The Trump Administration, pursuing its “America first” agenda, directed CBP to enforce section 307 more stringently, particularly against Chinese imports. It also used its economic muscle to persuade Canada and Mexico, two countries highly dependent on trade with the US, to implement forced labour import bans, widening the front of this trade-based attack. Further moves to impede Chinese imports were to follow. One of the few bipartisan 'unicorns' in American politics, the US government adopted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) in 2021. It presumes that goods produced in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China, or by certain entities with economic ties to that region, are made with forced labour. The European Union, while neither as geographically proximate to or economically dependent on the US as Canada and Mexico, has also imposed a forced labour import ban. Fears of the US’s retreat from multilateralism and the rise of China, as well as pressure from civil society organisations concerned to end forced labour in supply chains, help to explain why the EU adopted a regulation prohibiting products made with forced labour from the single market. Civil society: hoping protectionist measures can lead to a human rights outcome States in the global North are designing and enforcing forced labour bans with the primary aim of protecting their own markets and workers. Given this, why do so many human rights, corporate accountability and workers’ rights organisations continue to support them? I suggest two driving factors: a disappointment with voluntary measures, and a hope that bans can be built upon. Forced labour import bans are a big stick with extraterritorial reach. They appeal to civil society organisations because voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives, such as codes of conduct and social auditing, have done little to change the exploitive business practices of lead firms. Advocacy groups see import bans as having the potential to disrupt value chains and impose direct economic costs on suppliers and producers who exploit forced labour. Their goal is to use import bans to place “significant commercial pressure on companies to address forced labour in their supply chains or risk losing access to valuable export markets”. A big stick, but is it a dangerous one? But do forced labour bans exert enough pressure to change behaviour long-term? And what are their side effects? We must turn to the US ban to try to answer these questions, since both Canada and Mexico’s forced labour import bans are relatively untested and the EU regulation is not yet in effect. CBP is authorised to prevent goods from entering the US based on a reasonable suspicion of forced labour. The CBP can act upon submissions, which can be anonymous, or on its own initiative based on evidence in the public domain. Where it has a reasonable suspicion, CBP can issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO) – a type of pre-notification that gives importers an opportunity to provide evidence to overcome the suspicion. WROs can be issued against a shipment, a supplier, a sector, or goods from a particular region. Importers whose shipments are blocked at the border by a WRO can re-export the shipment to a destination without import prohibitions. Where CBP finds conclusive evidence of a violation of section 307 of the US Tariff Act, it adopts a ‘Finding’ and seizes affected products remaining within its jurisdiction. The vast majority of WROs issued by CBP have been based on complaints, some of which were lodged by competitors. Most have been against ‘foreign’ suppliers. No WROs have been issued against large US brands or retailers. As of January 2025, CBP was enforcing 51 WROs and nine Findings. Of these, 36 WROs and five Findings pertained to China. Four WROs and one Finding concerned fishing vessels. The rest concerned Latin America and the Caribbean (two WROs, three Findings), Africa (four WROs), and Asia and the Pacific (five WROS). These numbers pale when compared with the number of shipments detained or seized under the UFLPA. Between June 2022 and December 2024, CBP detained 12,666 shipments with a cumulative value of $3.68bn. But while the single largest number of shipments detained was imported directly from China (5,363), such goods only constituted 11% of the shipment value. Instead, the bulk of the shipment value came from merchandise imported from Malaysia (43%), Vietnam (28%), and Thailand (14%). Significantly, not all shipments that were detained were seized and forfeited. Indeed, about 43% of the detained shipments were eventually released. The shipment value of the goods released amounted to almost $2.8bn, amounting to 75% of the shipment value of the goods seized. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/do-forced-labour-bans-protect-workers-in-supply-chains-human-trafficking/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/