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WASHINGTON (AP) – The head of a major garment industry group told lawmakers Thursday (Sept. 17) that blanket U.S. import bans on cotton or other products from China’s Xinjiang region by Forced labor reasons would “wreak havoc” on legitimate supply chains.
Stephen Lamar, president of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, said his industry is working hard to remove forced labor products from its supply chains, but Xinjiang, where China has detained more than 1 million Uighur Muslims, represents a unique challenge.
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A blanket import ban on all Xinjiang cotton, like the one proposed earlier this month, would be impossible to enforce, as would bipartisan legislation that bans imports of all Xinjiang products unless it is shown that they are free from forced labor, Lamar told a House of Representatives. subcommittee hearing.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced five Retention of Release Orders (WROs) on Monday that prohibit imports of specific producers of cotton, textiles, clothing, hair products. and computer parts in Xinjiang, but they abstained from proposed blanket bans on all cotton and tomatoes in the region.
“Such a WRO or legislation would certainly make news, but it would wreak havoc on human rights, economic development, and legitimate supply chains, which have already been hit by COVID-19 around the world,” Lamar said.
“As a country, we simply do not have the capacity or capacity to implement or comply or enforce a general WRO or proposed legislation at this time.”
He said Xinjiang produces about 20 percent of all the cotton consumed in the world, and fibers from the region are often mixed with cotton grown in the United States and elsewhere. Cotton from Xinjiang is also exported to other garment-producing countries, including Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia, and there is no technology available to trace the origin of cotton with reasonable precision.
