(Samir Goswami – Just Security) Countering the spread of forced labor in global trade has long been an American priority, and the United States has among the strongest laws in the world to address it. However, as of 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor still identified 204 goods from 82 countries as being made by child and forced labor. Confronting this persistent challenge should be a priority for the Trump administration, as it supports several of its major national security, economic, and religious freedom goals. Nowhere is the problem of forced labor more pernicious than in China. The Chinese government’s horrifying, systematic abuse of the Uyghur people bears all the hallmarks of genocide. Uyghur people are subjected to arbitrary incarceration, forced labor, family separation, and forced sterilization. Millions have been forced into re-education and work camps, subject to torture and other atrocities. Frustratingly, the United States and other Western nations have some measure of complicity in these horrors because this exploited labor, at a massive scale, is ending up in Western supply chains. Forced labor is not just a moral crisis — it’s also an economic security challenge that disadvantages American businesses. State-imposed forced labor is unlawful and destructive. It spurs a race to the bottom, allowing China to flood global markets with artificially cheap goods that undercut American business, even while tightening Chinese control over minerals vital to aerospace, defense, consumer products, and other household technologies that Americans and others around the world use every day.
Forced Labor Fuels Unfair Trade: The U.S. Interest in Ending Abuses Against Uyghurs
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