December 16, 2021, was a historic day. A deeply divided and polarized Congress united to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) by a near-unanimous vote. It demonstrated a national commitment to stand in solidarity with persecuted ethnic groups in China and ensure that Americans—producers and consumers alike—do not inadvertently support slavery.
A year and a half later, the UFLPA is doing a lot of good—but it is also in danger of being undermined by a little-known legal loophole.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has already halted more than 3,500 shipments with potential ties to the Chinese Communist Party's slave labor camps and denied almost 500 of them entry into the U.S. That's $28 million in blood money that Chinese companies will go without. Other firms are cleaning up their supply chains and, in some cases, leaving China all together.
It's a start, but it is not enough—our restriction of slave-made goods entering the country must be airtight. Unfortunately, that is not yet the case. In addition to some questionable enforcement choices by the U.S. government, some Chinese companies have discovered they can get past CBP by flying under America's de minimis import value for regulation.
A 2015 amendment to the 93-year-old Tariff Act of 1930 is the source of the problem. The UFLPA bans "the import of all goods...mined, produced, or manufactured, wholly or in part, by forced labor from the People's Republic of China." But that ban is subject to the Obama-era Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, which instructs U.S. customs agents to "admit free from duty and tax shipments of merchandise...having an aggregate fair retail value in the country of shipment of not more than $800." In plain English, CBP will not inspect Chinese-made goods that do not exceed the value of $800.
Congress created such a high de minimis threshold to encourage other countries to do the same and thereby support international free trade. But things haven't gone as planned. China maintains an opaque system of tariffs and duties to protect Chinese companies' dominance in manufacturing. In 2016, Beijing went so far as to reduce its own de minimis threshold to just $7. Meanwhile, Chinese companies take advantage of America's loose laws to bypass the UFLPA.
Outlets like the fast fashion giant Shein escape inspection by selling cheap goods, none of which amount to $800 on their own, directly to Americans. According to the Human Trafficking Legal Center, Shein and other companies like it use "Xinjiang cotton in their low-value shipments being sent to the United States." Knowingly or not, Americans who purchase from these companies are supporting the enslavement of Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic and religious minorities.
We must put an end to this practice, for the sake of basic human rights and our nation's sacred values. We also must put an end to it for the sake of our national interest, because American companies lose out when forced to compete with slave labor, and American consumers lose out when they inadvertently buy shoddy, counterfeit, or even harmful goods, all of which may be brought into the U.S. under the $800 limit.
Moving forward, we must reevaluate our nation's de minimis standards and recognize that the 2015 approach, like most of our "engagement" with China this century, failed to change the Chinese Communist Party's behavior. We also must crack down on platforms like Temu, which facilitates direct-to-consumer transactions between Chinese companies and American consumers. The app emerged on the scene last fall and exploded in popularity, especially after spending $14 million on a Super Bowl ad touting ultra-fast apparel.
Cracking down on these companies and closing the de minimis loophole won't be easy, but that is no excuse for inaction. There is broad, bipartisan agreement that goods made by slave labor have no place in our country. We just need the political will to come together like we did in 2021 and do what is right.
Marco Rubio, a Republican, is the senior U.S. senator from Florida.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
