The head of the interagency Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force said one of the group's highest priorities this year is to add additional companies to the entity list of firms and organizations that either produce goods made with forced labor or are involved in the recruiting or transfer of minority workers out of Xinjiang to other parts of China.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP has received a third "exception request" under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act seeking to rebut the presumption that goods with content from China's Xinjiang province were made with forced labor, CBP officials said at a press conference March 14. The agency is still working through all three requests received so far by the agency, the officials said. CBP announced it had received the first two in January (see 2301270078).
The State Department is encouraging importers to join legally binding agreements with labor unions that include mechanisms for workers and employers to ensure labor standards are being met and resolve labor disputes, preventing forced labor indicators in the supply chain, a State Department official said at a CBP event on forced labor on March 14.
Shipments of electronics comprised half the number and nearly 90% of the value of all shipments stopped under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act since enforcement began in the third quarter of 2022, according to data released by CBP as part of its UFLPA “Dashboard,” which debuted March 14. The bulk of those shipments were of solar products, CBP officials said at a press conference that day.
CBP released a new frequently asked questions document on the upcoming Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Region Alert in ACE, set for deployment on March 18 (see 2212210041). Once it's in effect, “if no postal code is transmitted when it is flagged by the system as a required field, the record will remain in reject status and will not be accepted in the Cargo Release system,” CBP said in the FAQ. If an incorrect postal code is submitted, filers may transmit a replacement “R” or “C” record prior to the shipment’s arrival, the agency said. Importers should enter the street-level, rather than the city-level postal code, unless there is no postal code available for the specific street, CBP said.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP's Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) will next meet March 29 in Seattle, CBP said in a notice. Comments are due in writing by March 24.
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Though CBP's issuance of withhold release orders and forced labor findings has slowed recently as the agency focuses on implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the agency will continue to use its traditional tools to combat forced labor, aided by recent increases in funding for forced labor enforcement, Jessica Rifkin, a customs lawyer with Benjamin England & Associates, said during a webinar Feb. 28.