Xinjiang: apparel groups expect Trump administration blocking order on Chinese textile imports
- Sources say a Withhold Release Order is in the works, which would block some apparel imports thought to have been made with forced labour
- Barring the use of any Xinjiang cotton in clothing shipped to the United States would be an escalation of US actions on human rights abuses in the region
This story is part of an ongoing series on US-China relations, jointly produced by the South China Morning Post and POLITICO, with reporting from Asia and the United States.
US apparel groups are expecting a Trump administration decision as early as this week blocking imports of Chinese-made textile and apparel products on the grounds that they are the products of forced labour in the Xinjiang region of China, according to textiles industry sources and a former Trump White House trade official.
Such an order, which would come from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has the potential to affect tens of billions of dollars of US textile and clothing imports that contain cotton, yarn or fabric produced in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). It also could boomerang back on US cotton producers if Beijing is provoked into retaliation.
The mandate, known as a Withhold Release Order (WRO), would not be an actual import ban. But goods subject to a WRO have to be re-exported or destroyed if CBP determines they were made with forced labour.
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CBP did not respond to requests for comment.
Barring the use of any Xinjiang cotton in clothing shipped to the United States would be an escalation of US actions expressing disapproval of forced labour and other human rights abuses in the region. The US Commerce Department already has placed close to 50 Chinese operations on its Entity List for involvement in those practices, effectively banning US companies from doing business with them without a special license.
US-China relations have deteriorated dramatically in the past year over a number of issues, including Beijing’s handling of the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, its crackdown on political dissent in Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uygurs, an ethnic Muslim minority.