U.S. President Donald Trump is notoriously indifferent to human rights, and he makes no exception for China. Rather, Trump’s dominant concern with Beijing has been America’s trade deficit—prompting the full-blown trade war that now consumes headlines. In his last term, he secured a largely unfulfilled pledge from Chinese leader Xi Jinping to buy more American goods. But a greater focus on Beijing’s abysmal human rights record would have positive trade effects.
Today, Beijing’s most severe repression is directed at China’s Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking ethnic group of 11 million people, mostly Muslim, who live primarily in the northwestern Xinjiang region. Beginning in 2017, the Chinese government detained some 1 million Uyghurs.
Even when Chinese officials decide that detained Uyghurs are sufficiently loyal to Beijing, many are “freed” only to be placed in forced labor. No one knows the precise numbers, but Uyghur forced labor is said to be pervasive in Xinjiang, with an estimated 2.5 million at risk. Some 80,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been forced to work in other parts of China as well.
Under focus of the highly intrusive surveillance regime that Beijing has established in Xinjiang, Uyghurs have been detained for as little as traveling abroad or communicating with people overseas, donating to mosques, or preaching the Quran without authorization. Beijing claims to be fighting terrorism, but the sweeping nature of the detention belies that pretext.
Many Uyghurs are still in custody, held at least until their jailers think they have sufficiently abandoned their religion, culture, and language. Hundreds of thousands of families have had Han Chinese “guests” imposed upon them to monitor their behavior. Some Uyghurs, especially intellectuals, have now been charged with trumped-up crimes and given long prison sentences.
The persecution has been so severe that human rights groups concluded that it constitutes a crime against humanity. A plummeting birthrate among Uyghurs—caused by the widespread detention as well as the use of forced birth control—led the first Trump administration and others to find that Beijing was committing genocide.
In his last term, Trump seemed as if he couldn’t care less. He reportedly told Xi that the mass detention of Uyghurs “was exactly the right thing to do.”
Since then, the U.S. government’s response has been tougher. In 2021, it adopted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Sponsored by then-Sen. Marco Rubio, who is now Trump’s secretary of state, the legislation presumptively bars all imports from Xinjiang unless the importing company can demonstrate that forced labor was not used. Given the opacity of supply chains in Xinjiang, that is difficult if not impossible to show.
Unfair Chinese competitive practices are typically thought of in terms of government subsidies or concessional loans, but the use of forced labor, apart from being a serious human rights abuse, is also one way for Chinese producers to unfairly undercut competitors’ prices. People subject to forced labor have no capacity to insist on a fair wage or to switch jobs if wages are too low.
A growing list of industries is affected, including cotton (about 20 percent of the world’s cotton comes from Xinjiang, creating a major problem for the apparel industry), tomatoes (representing some 15 percent of the world’s tomato paste), and aluminum (10 percent). But the affected industry of the greatest strategic importance is polysilicon, which is used to make solar panels, one of the green products for which Beijing hopes to corner the global market. Some 45 percent of the world’s polysilicon is produced in Xinjiang.
Beyond his infatuation with tariffs, Trump should address China’s unfair competitive practice of using Uyghur forced labor. Some steps are straightforward. He should augment the number and expertise of U.S. customs agents assigned to examine Chinese imports to determine which came from Xinjiang.
That is especially needed to ensure there are sufficient agents to support Trump’s announced plan as of May 2 to end the exemption from customs inspections for packages worth less than $800 that importers can use to evade the ban on goods using Uyghur forced labor. Trump’s attempt in February to close that loophole was quickly stymied by the insufficient number of inspectors that caused serious delays.
Customs inspectors need added resources because they must do more than simply examine certificates of origin. Why should any customs official believe Chinese shipping documents when Beijing has already tried to cover up the detention facilities for Uyghurs by claiming that they were merely “vocational training centers,” as if no one would notice the walls, barbed-wire fences, and guards?
But Trump sees himself as a disruptor, and there are certain disruptive steps that would be productive to take. The European Union has a policy against importing goods that are made from forced labor, but it has not adopted a presumption against imports from Xinjiang.
Given the difficulty of identifying any particular good as the product of forced labor, the EU blocks few imports. While exports from Xinjiang to the United States have plummeted, exports to the EU in 2022 increased by a third. As part of resolving his trade war, Trump should press the EU, as well as Britain, Canada, and Australia, to adopt a similar presumption against any import from Xinjiang.
Chinese businesses are also evading the presumption by quietly shipping goods from Xinjiang to the United States via other parts of China or third countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand. The high tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose on these countries do not preclude their ongoing use to evade the ban on imports of the product of Uyghur forced labor. Greater customs scrutiny is needed.
To make matters worse, Beijing has imposed hefty fines on the people conducting the private due diligence that the U.S. government recommends importers undertake to ensure that a supply chain is free of forced labor. Some local employees of major firms conducting due diligence have been detained, although one group was released in March.
Unless Beijing opens up and allows free investigation of supply chains throughout the country to ensure they are not tainted by Uyghur forced labor, Trump should threaten to apply the presumption against imports to all goods from China. In addition, Trump should impose sanctions on Chinese subsidiaries in third countries that facilitate evasion of the presumption and add more companies to the “Entity List” from which imports are presumptively banned.
A focus on forced labor has potentially wider appeal than the use of tariffs. Trump’s tariffs have prompted global anger and retaliatory measures. But no government can afford to show indifference to forced labor. International law has banned forced labor since 1930.
In short, a trade policy that includes attention to China’s use of Uyghur forced labor could be a win-win. Regardless of what one thinks about Trump’s war against global trade, there is no question that China’s use of Uyghur forced labor is an unfair trade practice that should be stopped. It would undercut a major unfair competitive advantage for Chinese businesses, helping to whittle down the trade deficit, while addressing a serious human rights violation. Rubio gets it. Trump should, too.
The post Trump’s Trade War Should Target China’s Forced Labor appeared first on Foreign Policy.
