Choy Says More WROs Coming Outside UFLPA

The CBP executive who manages forced labor enforcement said that CBP is working on evaluating "commercially available services that may assist the agency and importers with establishing standardizing programs for origin testing and other types of innovations."

Eric Choy, executive director of the Trade Remedy Law Enforcement Directorate, spoke at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce program on combating forced labor on Nov. 13. He also said that while CBP has "increased our efforts to leverage analytic modeling to segment forced labor risks in supply chains and to improve the accuracy of our screening capabilities," using artificial intelligence and analytics to identify patterns and trends is still early, and its full potential is yet to be known.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which has led to the detention of $1.9 billion worth of goods, is not the only forced labor enforcement CBP undertakes, Choy reminded the audience.

He said his team is investigating a little more than 60 allegations of forced labor. "We’ll move very robustly this year on more withhold release orders," he said.

Thea Lee, deputy undersecretary for international affairs at the international labor affairs bureau, or ILAB, also broadened the discussion past UFLPA. Her agency is on the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, which chooses entities for UFLPA's entity list, but also produces reports on commodities at highest risk of being produced with the worst forms of child labor and for forced labor.

She told the audience that forced labor is in polysilicon from Xinjiang, made into solar panels, and in cobalt from the Congo made into EV batteries, and she noted the recent coverage of forced labor in seafood processing in Eastern China.

"We know these situations exist all over the world," she said. "This is not just a moral imperative, it is now an economic imperative for businesses to figure out how exactly how to address these supply chain issues to avoid interruption of market access, or reputational damage, which can also be economically damaging."

She argued that businesses chose to engage in contract manufacturing or outsourcing of cleaning services or other ancillary services so that they could shed responsibility for working conditions in those areas.

"It’s not working anymore," she said. "The luxury of ignorance that companies had with regard to their supply chains is no longer available."

David Niccollini, a partner from Evidencity, a company that offers data to fight modern slavery, interviewed Neil Giles of Britain's Traffik Analysis Hub, and they talked about how effective withhold release orders are to get companies to stop exploiting workers.

Giles gave the example of Sime Darby, a palm oil plantation in Malaysia that was first hit with a withhold release order on its products (see 201230000), and then a finding (see 2201270017), which meant the palm oil products were seized at port and couldn't be reexported.

Giles said that journalists and nonprofits uncovered the fact that the plantation's workforce was largely Rohinga refugees from Myanmar who had been driven out of that country and were living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Those people were recruited to Malaysia, and according to Giles, their terms of employment were changed after they arrived so that they had to meet such high harvest quotas that children had to work, too.

"Having those containers sit on the dockside, the gap in production that issued from that, that’s problem of considerable proportions," he said.

Ultimately, Sime Darby reimbursed fees the refugees had paid to get the jobs in Malaysia, almost $20 million worth, as well as adding ways for workers to report grievances.

The finding was then lifted, and their products were allowed back in the U.S. (see 2302020038). "It’s a wonderful example, I think, to the world of business," Giles said.

He added: "Everyone needs to understand how they can spot the problems and ask better questions."

Forced labor is a topic of great interest in Congress, and Choy alluded to the political pressures the agency is facing from businesses and politicians.

Choy said that enforcing the ban on the import of goods made with forced labor "is one of the most pressing trade issues that CBP has undertaken.

"The external pressures on the agency to enforce are great. The external pressures on the agency to enforce less are great. Ultimately, the agency is committed to strong enforcement of our nation’s forced labor laws."