The United States has banned imports of a key material to make solar panels from a Chinese company as part of a wider effort to protect U.S. supply chains from forced labor inflicted on ethnic Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang region, the White House announced on June 24. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a “Withhold Release Order” to detain shipments of silica-based products, a raw material used for solar panel production, made by Xinjiang-based Hoshine Silicon Industry Co. Ltd. and its subsidiaries. In addition, the Commerce Department has added five Chinese organizations to a trade blacklist over their use of forced labor in Xinjiang or otherwise aiding Beijing’s rights abuses in the region. They include Hoshine Silicon Industry, three other Xinjiang-based Chinese companies linked to the production of raw materials and components for the solar industry, and the Chinese regime’s paramilitary body Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. About …