A nonprofit is asking the Treasury Department to sanction seven Chinese companies after its reporting revealed their alleged ties to forced labor in China’s seafood industry (see 2310100030). The Outlaw Ocean Project, a Washington-based investigative journalism non-profit, said it submitted a petition to Treasury calling for human rights sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act against the seven companies and their affiliates, who are “complicit in serious human rights abuses” against Xinjiang workers.
Nineteen members of the House of Representatives, along with three Pacific territory delegates, are publicly shaming Sysco for not cutting ties with Rongcheng Haibo, a processing plant in China that the Outlaw Ocean Project reported employs Uyghur laborers transferred from Western China (see 2310100030).
The government is considering adding seafood to its list of priority enforcement targets, joining cotton, polysilicon and tomatoes, according to testimony at a House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight hearing.
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Sayari, a risk compliance analysis firm, announced that the Bureau of International Labor Affairs has signed a contract to use Sayari Graph to uncover forced labor ties in supply chains.
The National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones did a round of lobbying calls last month to tell appropriators that in some ports, CBP isn't accepting applications for new FTZs because they don't have the resources to manage them. That, in turn, delays economic development, they argued. In a news release published Jan. 5, NAFTZ said that during the 14 meetings, they also argued that lack of money is the reason CBP backtracked on allowing goods detained under suspicion of forced labor to be housed in FTZs.
CBP posted to its website an attachment it has been sending along with notices of detention under the Uyghur Forced Labor Detention Act that includes examples of documentation importers may submit to obtain a release, including for several products that only recently have come under CBP scrutiny.
Companies, labor unions and domestic producer coalitions that support antidumping and countervailing duties on Vietnamese exports all said Vietnam has not changed its practices enough to be considered a market economy in AD/CVD cases in the 21 years since the last evaluation of its status found it wasn't.
U.S. solar cell maker Auxin Solar and solar module designer Concept Clean Energy launched a lawsuit at the Court of International Trade on Dec. 29 to contest the Commerce Department's pause of antidumping and countervailing duties on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells and modules from Southeast Asian found to be circumventing the AD/CVD orders on these products from China (Auxin Solar v. U.S., CIT # 23-00274).
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.