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  • September 2022 (Revised November 2022)
  • Case
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The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: Forced Labor and Genocide in U.S.-China Relations

By: Jeremy Friedman and David Lane
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:30
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Abstract

On June 21, 2022, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) went into effect, requiring companies to prove that goods imported from the People’s Republic of China were not made with forced labor. The bill was a reaction to reports of products being made with forced labor from Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities being held in camps in the PRC, chiefly in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. However, implementation of the bill would be difficult. The PRC government denied the existence of forced labor, and this would make it nearly impossible for importers to trace their supply chains all the way to the origins of primary goods and prove that no forced labor was involved. Three industries were chiefly at stake—tomatoes, cotton, and polysilicon—at a time of high inflation and increasing urgency to do something about climate change, but the bill also threatened to fundamentally re-shape U.S.-PRC relations, potentially along the lines of a full-scale economic “decoupling.”

Keywords

Ethics; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Government Legislation; International Relations; Labor; Wages; Law Enforcement; Law; Rights; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Business and Government Relations; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Mining Industry; China; United States

Citation

Friedman, Jeremy, and David Lane. "The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: Forced Labor and Genocide in U.S.-China Relations." Harvard Business School Case 723-001, September 2022. (Revised November 2022.)
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About The Author

Jeremy S. Friedman

Business, Government and the International Economy
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Related Work

    • September 2022 (Revised November 2022)
    • Faculty Research

    The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: Forced Labor and Genocide in U.S.-China Relations

    By: Jeremy Friedman and David Lane
Related Work
  • The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: Forced Labor and Genocide in U.S.-China Relations By: Jeremy Friedman and David Lane
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