In recent years, the global supply chain has become inextricably linked with human rights concerns, particularly surrounding the Chinese government’s systemic repression of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. While the U.S. has taken steps to address this injustice, most notably through the passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), the persistent flow of forced labor-linked goods into American markets reveals glaring enforcement gaps that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must address.
A brief contextualization of U.S.-Uyghur policy is crucial to understanding this crisis. In 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s surveillance report identified 83 foreign and Chinese companies — Nike, Samsung, BMW, Puma, Amazon, Abercrombie & Fitch, Shein and Temu, amongst others — as allegedly directly or indirectly benefiting from the exploitation of Uyghur workers.
In response, Congress passed the UFLPA, which banned the importation of goods, wares, articles and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured with forced labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
Since its implementation by the DHS in 2022, the UFLPA has denied over $50 million in Xinjiang exports to the U.S., causing some multinational corporations to cease exploitative labor practices in the XUAR. However, many companies have found ways to circumvent these trade restrictions; in 2024 and 2025, $1.48 billion in goods subject to review under the UFLPA were cleared for entry by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), a sub-branch of the DHS.
First, companies can transfer forced laborers from the Xinjiang region to other regions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a circumventive strategy that complicates CBP enforcement on XUAR products. This displacement happens in concert with the buying and selling of XUAR labor plants between state and private actors. For example, in 2024, Volkswagen exited its Xinjiang plant by selling it to Shanghai Motor Vehicle Inspection Certification (SMVIC), a subsidiary of state-owned Shanghai Lingang Development Group, that took on all the plant’s employees. Transfer of power loopholes like this facilitate the sustained exploitation of Uyghur people; the abuse does not end, it just changes hands.
A second factor is Beijing’s increased transshipment of forced labor products to the U.S. through third-party actors, including countries listed as U.S. free trade agreement partners. Because of this, third-country exporters have become a significant channel through which Xinjiang-origin cotton enters the U.S. Vietnam, among many other countries, extensively sources cotton, yarn and fabric from the PRC, where 90% of cotton is manufactured in the XUAR, to produce finished textile goods for export to the U.S.
Despite DHS updates, the UFLPA’s Entity List remains incomplete, with companies exploiting gaps by sourcing from unlisted subsidiaries or affiliates.
As multinational corporations exploit legal loopholes and third-party trade routes to obscure the origins of their goods, the insufficiencies in U.S. policy crystallize. Effective intervention requires the CBP to adopt a more comprehensive and assertive approach to UFLPA enforcement — one that targets labor transfer schemes, transshipment through free trade partners and the inadequacies of the current Entity List. The stakes are unambiguous: without decisive action, the U.S. remains entangled in an egregious human rights atrocity.
Such action requires significant upheaval. Firstly, the CBP must expand and standardize the use of isotopic testing, a process through which scientists identify isotopic fingerprints — determined by the water, air, soil and wind conditions that shape the atomic structure of a plant (e.g., cotton) — and use comparative analysis to verify whether raw material’s composition matches its claimed place of origin.
While isotopic testing does present logistical and cost challenges — the first 86 samples cost the CBP $1.3 million – its proven reliability in tracing cotton origins, as demonstrated in recent DHS pilot programs, makes it a necessary investment for any enforcement regime serious about rooting out forced labor.
Other objectives include: more transparent communication of the CBP’s enforcement activities to deter potential violators; increased on-site inspections of CAFTA-DR (Dominican Republic-Central America) and USMCA (United States of America, Mexico and Canada) production sites to conduct rule of origin verification investigations, which have plummeted in recent years despite a massive influx of yarns and fabrics from the PRC into the region; and enhance its collaboration with the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in identifying suspicious global trade patterns involving the PRC to help target countries that are potentially serving as transshipment points.
The intention of my criticism is not to negate U.S. crisis-intervention efforts thus far. Indeed, the Biden and Trump administrations have often put their money where their mouth is. For instance, in April 2025, Trump signed an Executive Order ending de minimis treatment on U.S. imports – a UFLPA loophole that allowed goods under $800 to enter the country without investigation, which will help the DHS curb forced labor exploitation by e-commerce firms like Shein and Temu. While this order is a huge step forward for the campaign to end the Uyghur people’s suffering, there is still much to accomplish.
Ultimately, this issue speaks to the integrity of the international community and the principles on which democratic nations like the U.S. claim to stand. If we do not address these loopholes, we risk compromising the values of justice and human dignity. The U.S. must adopt a more aggressive and thorough stance, using its economic influence to hold corporations accountable and actively working to end China’s genocidal campaign against the Uyghur people.
