This piece originally appeared in Washington Examiner.
The Chinese companies Shein and Temu have become wildly popular for their dirt-cheap clothes and gadgets. Hidden behind the trendy bargains, however, rests an ugly truth: these companies are profiting from slave labor. Mounting evidence ties their supply chains to forced labor by Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region. This isn’t a minor allegation; it’s part of what many countries recognize as an ongoing genocide against the Uyghur people.
President Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly weighing whether to add Shein and Temu to the Department of Homeland Security’s forced labor blacklist. As the Trump administration works to decouple the United States from reliance on Chinese goods, leveraging existing authority to prevent Shein and Temu from skirting U.S. law should be a priority. Kicking out forced-labor profiteers would protect our values and strengthen our resilience against a hostile foreign power.
In 2021, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) to ensure that American commercial activity is not supporting forced labor. The UFLPA created a rebuttable presumption that any goods connected to Xinjiang are tainted by forced labor and barred from import unless proven otherwise.
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