Midway through the second term of solar safeguards, imports of solar panels (modules) and cells have been climbing, and the market has almost entirely shifted to bifacial solar panels, which were at first carved out of the safeguard. Whether a decision to revoke that exclusion in 2019 was legal is still being litigated (see 2311130031 and 2401290014).
Forbes reported that Walmart's online platform and Amazon have listings for canned tomatoes or tomato paste from the brands Nina, Gino and Zehrat Safa, and it said those brands are produced by Heibei Tomato Industry. That Chinese company says on "its website that 'raw materials come from Xinjiang,'" the article said.
Waaree Energies Ltd., an Indian solar panel manufacturer that accounts for about 9% of U.S. imports, has been buying solar cells from Longi, a Chinese manufacturer that Sheffield Hallam University tied to Xinjiang polysilicon.
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.
The Chinese government is going out of its way to evade forced labor laws by making supply chains less transparent, including by limiting access to corporate information online with "heavy" censorship, Yalkun Uluyol, a researcher at the Forced Labour Lab at Sheffield Hallam University, said at a U.K. Parliament hearing Feb. 6.
Because the FDA is not able to inspect foreign pharmaceutical factories with enough frequency -- and because the quality of those inspections is compromised by several factors -- some suggest that more imported drugs should be inspected at the border to ensure quality.
Lori Wallach, a long-time free-trade skeptic, urged listeners to her Rethink Trade podcast to call their members of Congress and say: "I am scared silly about the abuse of this outrageous de minimis loophole. What is the congressman going to do to close this loophole?"
Human Rights Watch says that "some car manufacturers in China have succumbed to government pressure to apply weaker human rights and responsible sourcing standards at their Chinese joint ventures than in their global operations," and argues that car companies should disengage from all suppliers that source aluminum from Xinjiang, and should map aluminum supply chains back to the bauxite mines, whether for aluminum ingots or semi-fabricated aluminum.
McDonald's, Illy, Nestle and other companies responded to allegations from civil society groups that their supply chains in Brazil have ties to forced labor.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directed CBP and Homeland Security Investigations to "provide him with a comprehensive enforcement action plan in 30 days" to protect domestic textile interests. The announcement, after a meeting with domestic textile mill owners who asked the government to step up free trade agreement enforcement and Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act apparel enforcement and to end de minimis sales, also says that report should include "a determination whether current trade law provides adequate authorities to solve the core issues."