Four Republican House Committee Chairs sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas criticizing the implementation and enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), complaining that not enough has been done to penalize violators, and calling for more resources to be allocated to enforcement.
The letter was sent by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC), House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN), and House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI).
Mr. Mayorkas was addressed as Chair of the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), which includes representatives of seven member agencies and six observer agencies. Signed into law on December 23, 2021, the UFLPA was implemented to prevent the importation of goods into the United States manufactured wholly or in part with forced labor in Communist China, especially from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
“Furthermore, we are concerned that since the UFLPA was signed into law the Administration has not issued any sanctions using the authorities under that act,” the lawmakers wrote.
“Additionally, the Administration has not designated any parties in violation of the UFLPA. While we understand the process to identify and impose these actions requires due diligence, the amount of time passed without any action raises serious questions about the Administration’s efforts to implement the law dutifully.”
The full text of the letter can be found here. Below a condensed version.
[...] While we are pleased with some aspects of the Administration’s implementation, we have strong concerns about others. Accordingly, we are writing to you—as the chair of the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF)—to express our concerns and to seek information to address these issues.
We support the withhold release orders and entity listings under UFLPA authorities such as the addition of nine PRC-based companies and their subsidiaries, the efforts to stop nearly 4,651 shipments for UFLPA reviews and enforcement actions, and the responsiveness of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to oversight inquiries. However, we are concerned about other decisions within the implementation process.
Of note, we are concerned with the FLETF’s decision to grant the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) the critical role of monitoring forced labor in the PRC. When Congress wrote the UFLPA, it had an altogether different concept for implementing its monitoring provisions.[
ILAB does not and should not be expected to have the intelligence capabilities necessary to implement the UFLPA. It is our understanding that ILAB employs an insufficient number of cleared personnel and that it relies on open-source tools such as Google translate. While ILAB has a background in monitoring unfair labor laws globally, identifying instances of forced labor amid an ongoing genocide by the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang is drastically different.
Moreover, globalized supply chains can present difficulties in pinpointing products manufactured with forced labor. This has resulted in lags in analysis needed for proper enforcement of the law and in robust utilization of the UFLPA Entity List.
Accordingly, we request the FLETF designate a more appropriate, intelligence-oriented federal agency to lead the UFLPA’s monitoring provisions.
Furthermore, we are concerned that since the UFLPA was signed into law the Administration has not issued any sanctions using the authorities under that act.
Additionally, the Administration has not designated any parties in violation of the UFLPA. While we understand the process to identify and impose these actions requires due diligence, the amount of time passed without any action raises serious questions about the Administration’s efforts to implement the law dutifully.
Lastly, we are concerned by the sluggish pace at which the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has made updates to its Entity List. We understand that the process to identify and impose these actions also requires due diligence. However, BIS has a disappointing track record of deficient actions, which raises further questions about its ability to implement the UFLPA appropriately.
To assist our oversight of the UFLPA and FLETF, we require responses to the following questions no later than October 27, 2023:
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