A look at the 80+ companies who have been added to the Department of Homeland Security’s UFLPA Entity List.
UPDATE: On November 22, the Department of Homeland Security announced that 29 more companies will be added to the UFLPA Entity List. These new restrictions, which will become effective on November 25, will bring the total number of entities sanctioned through the UFLPA to 107. See the names of the newly added entities below.
Enacted on December 23, 2021, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) was passed with the goal of preventing U.S. importers from doing business with any companies implicated in forced labor practices in the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China. The law, which went into effect in June of the following year, carries out this prohibition on goods imported from the XUAR in two ways.
First, it establishes a “rebuttable presumption” that any commodities manufactured in whole or part in the XUAR were done so using forced labor, and are thus subject to 19 U.S. Code § 1307, which prohibits the importation of any products manufactured through such means. Importers may request an exception to this sweeping presumption from Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency responsible for the law’s implementation and enforcement. Businesses must clear a high bar, however, to attain those exemptions, including by showing full compliance with the UFLPA’s due diligence requirements and by providing “clear and convincing” evidence that the goods in question were not produced using forced labor.
CBP’s second means of enforcement is through the UFLPA Entity List. Initially published by the Department of Homeland Security on June 21, 2022, this list consists of organizations that are based in Xinjiang and mine, produce, or manufacture goods using forced labor, and those that collaborate with the Chinese government to recruit, transport, or receive Uyghurs and other persecuted groups from Xinjiang for the purposes of forced labor. In addition, the list also encompasses entities known to be participating in the country’s “poverty alleviation” and “pairing assistance” programs—government schemes widely understood to be thinly-veiled guises for systematic forced labor.
CBP maintains statistics on the UFLPA, and recent figures demonstrate that the agency’s enforcement has grown increasingly robust since the law’s enactment in 2022. In fiscal year 2023, CBP detained a total of $1.42 billion worth of shipments for UFLPA compliance review. The agency reached that figure through the first seven months of fiscal year 2024, increasing the frequency of detainments in categories such as electronics, apparel, and industrial materials. While the number of denied shipments ticked downward over the summer, 2024 will still easily surpass each of the previous two years in terms of the total value of detainments, and may come close to approaching $2 billion. Meanwhile, this past March continues to represent the peak of UFLPA enforcement, with CBP detaining $300 million of imported goods and subjecting them to the agency’s review process.
Since the law went into effect over two years ago, dozens of companies—including many that allegedly operated under various aliases—have been added to the DHS’s UFLPA Entity List. While these firms work in a wide range of industries that include non-ferrous metals, printing and imaging, and hair products, the list puts an especially strong emphasis on textile manufacturing businesses (CBP statistics indicate that UFLPA shipment interdictions are also heavily focused on electronics). This may be a function of the predominant sectors in the XUAR, the specific industries being targeted by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) forced labor programs, or the risk assessments and intelligence-gathering efforts of the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), the interagency group charged with enforcing 19 U.S. Code § 1307.
The final three companies—Xinya New Materials, COFCO Sugar, and Jingweida Technology—were added by the DHS in December 2023. Xinya New Materials, a textile manufacturer based in Anhui Province, was found to be collaborating with a known forced-labor program, Xinjiang Aid, to recruit individuals living in Xinjiang and transfer them to Anhui Province to work at its facilities. COFCO Sugar, a sugar and vegetable processing company headquartered in Xinjiang, participated in a PRC poverty alleviation program and traveled to XUAR villages to recruit members of persecuted ethnic minorities to work at the firm’s facilities. And Jingweida Technology, an electronics manufacturer that produces network transformers and other magnetic devices, cooperated with the local government in Awati County to transfer members of persecuted groups out of Xinjiang to work in its factories in Sichuan Province.
Xinjiang Habahe Ashele Copper Co., Ltd. (also known as Ashele Copper) is a subsidiary of Zijin Mining Group Co., Ltd, a multinational mining group found in the supply chain of a number of major companies, especially as a supplier of gold. Zijin is in a number of supply chains in the semiconductor, IP&E, automotive, electrical solutions industry, and more.
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As CBP’s UFLPA dashboard demonstrates, the level and scope of the law’s enforcement was steadily increasing in 2024 before a notable slide in the second and third quarters of the year. There are a few possible factors that could be contributing to this trend. First, the number of solar panel shipments detained by CBP has declined significantly since its peak earlier in the year. Once accounting for nearly half of all detentions, during the month of June only around a quarter of the total value of CBP detainments came from such shipments.
Second, and more encouragingly, there are signs that U.S. importers and manufacturers may be reconfiguring their supply chains as a direct consequence of the rise of the UFLPA. Speaking to the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in June, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas observed that the DHS has seen companies “begin to shift their supply chains in very, very significant ways.” In the solar industry in particular, Mayorkas remarked that he and his team at DHS have seen firms begin to transition away from Xinjiang province—which produces a substantial portion of the world’s polysilicon—to other sourcing partners. “We’ve seen them shift the supply chain to a point where, by 2026, I believe, we’re going to see a 200 percent increase in the manufacture of solar-trade polysilicon in North America and India,” he said.
These signs of substantive changes in sourcing and supply chains that were once enmeshed, wittingly or otherwise, in forced labor practices testify to the persuasive power of the UFLPA and two years of robust enforcement. These shifting sourcing patterns have also come on the heels of a sustained and vigorous push to strengthen the law. Over the course of 2023, multiple congressional groups, including the bill’s original sponsors and the House Select Committee on the CCP, submitted policy recommendations aimed at expanding the UFLPA and its enforcement mechanisms. Social justice and human rights organizations, meanwhile, continued agitating for more aggressive measures to punish China’s inhumane practices and interdict goods implicated in the CCP’s forced-labor programs from entering the U.S. supply chains.
It seems that these concerted, yearslong efforts to impose accountability on the CCP and reduce the suffering of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the XUAR are finally starting to pay off. Nevertheless, much work remains to be done. Forced labor experts have suggested that as many as 55,000 companies are operating in some capacity in the Uyghur Region, with at least 150 knowingly participating in state-sponsored labor transfer programs. So while the number of CBP detainments might have decreased in recent months, the moral imperative for the law to continue pressuring companies to restructure their supply chains away from Xinjiang is as strong as ever.
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