US President Joe Biden signed a law on Thursday banning imports from China’s Xinjiang region because of concerns about forced labor, the White House said.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is part of the US pushback against Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority in China, which Washington has labeled genocide.
The bill passed Congress this month after lawmakers reached a compromise between the House and Senate versions.
At the heart of the legislation is a “rebuttable presumption” that all goods from Xinjiang, where Beijing has set up detention centers for Uyghurs and other Muslim groups, are made using forced labor. It prohibits imports unless it can be proven otherwise.
Some goods – such as cotton, tomatoes and polysilicon, which are used in the manufacture of solar panels – are rated “high priority” for enforcement purposes.
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China denies abuses in Xinjiang, a large cotton producer that also supplies much of the world’s solar panel materials.
The Washington Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
Nury Turkel, the Uighur-American vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, told Reuters this month that the bill’s effectiveness would depend on the Biden government’s willingness to ensure it is in effect, especially when companies request exemptions.
One of the bill’s co-drafters, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, said it was necessary to “send a clear and unequivocal message against genocide and slave labor.”
“Now … we can finally ensure that American consumers and businesses can buy goods without accidentally engaging in China’s horrific human rights abuses,” he said in a statement.
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In the final days of January, the Trump administration announced a ban on all cotton and tomato products from Xinjiang.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimated at the time that about $ 9 billion in cotton products and $ 10 million in tomato products were imported from China last year.
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