Various prominent U.S. corporations, including Walmart and Intel, might be shying away from principled stances condemning foreign uses of slavery and child labor for the production of cheap consumer goods. An importation rule change proposes to eliminate declarations on imported goods that offer insights into where goods come from and whether abusive labor practices were at play. The net effect would be to help countries of origin hide their abuses from their American customers.
The existing U.S. Customs and Border Protection rules require statements of origin on shipping manifests, which offer significant clues about the labor conditions behind certain products. Consumers, of course, want access to cheap goods. But is it really worth saving a few cents to purchase goods in which slavery, forced abortion, torture or child exploitation were part of the production process?
Consider the situation of Uyghurs in China. They are a primarily Muslim ethnic minority targeted by the Chinese government for “reeducation” because they are deemed too independent of Communist Party control. More than 1 million have been detained and sent to reeducation camps since 2017. They are subjected to torture, forced labor, involuntary sterilizations and forced abortions, the State Department says. Children have been taken from their parents. In the Xinjiang region of northwestern China, forced labor yields products that China then tries to export, including cotton fabric and components of microchips.
