Leading corporate woke warriors Nike and Adidas, which have made virtue signaling an art form, are now facing more questions about benefitting on the backs of forced laborers in China.
Lawmakers on the House’s Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party want answers.
Committee Chairman U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL-08) have sent letters to the sportswear titans, as well as China-based retailers Shein and Temu, noting concerns about the retailers’ alleged continued use of Uyghur forced labor in their supply chains — in defiance of the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The UFLPA outlawed the dehumanizing practice.
The lawmakers also want to know if Shein, a Chinese on-demand fashion manufacturer, and Temu, a Chinese-owned shopping app, are using the de minimis loophole in U.S. trade law to skirt the forced labor prevention act.
Gallagher’s office tells The Wisconsin Daily Star that the companies had yet to respond to the committee’s letters. The deadline is May 16.
“Using forced labor has been illegal for almost a hundred years—but despite knowing that their industries are implicated, too many companies look the other way hoping they don’t get caught, rather than cleaning up their supply chains. This is unacceptable,” Gallagher said in a statement.
“American businesses and companies selling in the American market have a moral and legal obligation to ensure they are not implicating themselves, their customers, or their shareholders in slave labor. Our message to industry in these letters is clear: either ensure your supply chains are clean — no matter how difficult it is — or get out of countries like China implicated in forced labor.”
As the lawmakers note, recent reports indicate Nike may be sourcing materials — including cotton — from suppliers who produce in the Xinjiang, or Uygur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. The communist Chinese government has imprisoned more than 1 million people — mostly from the Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group living in the northwestern region of Xinjiang — since 2017. Communist China has subjected those not detained to intense surveillance, religious restrictions, forced labor, and forced sterilizations, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Allegations of Nike’s use of source material from the repressed region were reinforced in written testimony of Adrian Zenz, Senior Fellow and director of the China Studies Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C. Zenz testified last month before the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, detailing “The Chinese Communist Party’s Ongoing Uyghur Genocide.”
Nike previously was accused of using Uyghur forced labor to manufacture its products in China. The sports apparel company, which has spent millions of dollars on social justice causes and marketing in the United States, spent thousands of dollars lobbying against the UFLPA.
“The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen,” the Australian Strategic Policy Institute wrote in a bombshell report titled, “Uyghurs for Sale.”
Meanwhile, researchers in Germany recently concluded Adidas clothing was made with cotton from the Xinjiang region. Zenz also testified to the allegations.
Shein, which has made a name and a hefty profit by selling low-priced fashions, extensively in the United States, has its own troubles with questionably sourced products, according to multiple reports.
“Shein is aggressively raising capital and plans to execute an IPO before the end of this calendar year,” several members of congress, including U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI-05), wrote in a letter to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler. “Shein has come under heavy criticism for utilizing underpaid labor in its supplier factories and violating human rights. While Shein claims its products do not utilize Uyghur forced labor and it works with third parties to audit its facilities, experts counter these types of audits are easily manipulated or falsified by state-sponsored pressure.”
Recent laboratory testing concluded that garments shipped to the U.S. by Shein were made with cotton from China’s Xinjiang region, potentially violating the UFLPA.
Both Shein and Temu ship their products through the de minimis channel, which provides admission of articles free of duty and of any tax imposed on or by reason of importation for individuals who make purchases of up to $800 per day.
More than 2 million packages each day enter the United States without forced labor scrutiny thanks to the de minimis exception, which was not originally intended to be a loophole for businesses. It was implemented to minimize the burden on U.S. Customs agents from examining packages with minimal value.
Shein and Temu have built their businesses — at least in part — on the the loophole, used to undercut their American competitors’ prices.
The committee’s letters to the fashion brand multi-nationals follow requests from lawmakers asking federal regulators to prohibit Shein from using forced labor as a condition of its initial public offering.
“The American people deserve to know how much of what they’re wearing was produced by forced labor in China,” Krishnamoorthi said in the statement.” We’ve heard from victims about the brutality of forced labor camps that are part of the CCP’s ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China. These companies need to show that they’re following the law, and their supply chains are free from forced labor.”
Krishnamoorthi added that he and Gallagher will continue to shine light on how forced labor may “contaminate our supply chains, and how we need to put an end to this going forward.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Mike Gallagher” by Rep. Mike Gallagher. Background Photo “Nike Headquarters” by Parker Knight. CC BY 2.0.
