US bill banning Xinjiang imports over forced labour concerns fails to become law
- The legislation is expected to be reintroduced when the next congressional session convenes in January
- Measure was omitted from the must-pass spending bill that passed both houses of Congress late on Monday
When the 5,593-page spending bill and coronavirus relief package was unveiled in the US Congress on Monday just hours before its passage, it set off the usual scramble among policy observers to find out which unrelated bills had been bolted on to the must-pass legislation.
Among the amendments, known on Capitol Hill as “riders”, was a bill strengthening US support for human rights in Tibet, provisions to create public museums to honour the history of women and Latinos, and legislation to protect insured patients from surprise medical bills.
But for advocates of a stronger US challenge of Beijing’s human rights record, there was one prominent omission: legislation that would ban all imports from China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region over concerns about widespread forced labour there.
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But with the last major legislative order of this congressional session concluded, any hope that the swell of bipartisan support for a stronger US policy to counter Beijing would see the forced labour bill enacted this year has been extinguished.