Over the past five months, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has identified more than 1,900 shipments—valued at nearly $500 million—that were suspected of containing goods made with forced labor.
The vast majority of those shipments, 1,701 valued at $487 million, were identified under the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA), which took effect less than one year ago.
The importation of goods produced with forced labor has been illegal since 1930.
A person picking cotton in China’s Xinjiang region on Sept. 20, 2015. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
The recently escalated enforcement is due in part to a UFLPA provision making it U.S. policy to make the “rebuttable presumption” that all products manufactured in the Xinjiang region of China are produced using forced labor….