On July 9, 2024, the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), a multi-agency task force chaired by the Department of Homeland Security, published an update to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Strategy to Prevent the Importation of Goods Mined, Produced, or Manufactured with Forced Labor in the People's Republic of China. This update, following the initial issuance in June 2022, introduces three new high-priority sectors for enforcement: polyvinyl chloride (PVC), aluminum, and seafood. These additions mark the first expansion of high-priority sectors for enforcement since the strategy's implementation, reflecting the U.S. government's intensified enforcement of the UFLPA. The 2024 update also mentions the addition of new entities to the UFLPA Entity List during the reporting period, further expanding the scope of enforcement.
The UFLPA requires the FLETF to provide annual updates to the UFLPA Strategy addressing the UFLPA Entity list, the list of products associated with certain listed entities, plans for enforcement and identifying additional entities, and high-priority sectors. The UFLPA Strategy informs U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) enforcement actions under the UFLPA's rebuttable presumption, which prohibits the importation of goods mined, produced, or manufactured in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) or by entities on the UFLPA Entity List.
Since its inception, CBP has detained more than 9,000 shipments valued at over $3.5 billion, and denied entry to close to half of those shipments, underscoring the UFLPA's enforcement impact.
For more in-depth background and enforcement information regarding the UFLPA please consult our website here and here.
Additional High-Priority Sectors and Further Expansion of the Entity List
First, the update reports that the FLETF has named an additional 38 entities for inclusion in the UFLPA Entity list, which now lists a total of 68 entities. The FLETF expects to continue to expand the UFLPA Entity list to provide greater support and transparency to private sector due diligence and compliance efforts.
The most substantive update in the 2024 strategy is the introduction of new high-priority sectors for enforcement. The previously identified high-priority sectors, mandated by the UFLPA, were tomatoes, cotton, and polysilicon; the 2024 update added polyvinyl chloride (PVC), aluminum, and seafood. This expansion reflects the ongoing efforts to address and mitigate forced labor practice concerns in certain critical industries such as auto manufacturing.
Business Impact
The update reflects the FLETF's continued refinement of UFLPA enforcement, which has seen an increase in FY2024. The value of shipments examined in FY2024 has already surpassed FY2023 despite having 3 more months left to go in the current fiscal year.
While the formal inclusion of new high-priority sectors is notable, many of these products have already been under scrutiny for some time. For instance, in a 2022 report, Sheffield Hallam University's Forced Labour Lab, a think-tank whose findings appear to be relied upon by the FLETF, identified polyvinyl chloride (PVC) as a sector involved in forced labor. There have been numerous news reports, dating back to 2023, by The New Yorker, Politico, and the Pulitzer Center, on forced labor in China's seafood industry. Furthermore, "fish" products from China have been listed as having forced labor issues by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affair's "ILAB List of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor" since 2020. This suggests that corporate compliance and due diligence departments should continue to look at civil society, media, and academic reporting to identify potential forced labor risks in their supply chains, even before they are formally named by the FLETF.
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