Promotional products suppliers, along with distributors that import product directly, are now legally obligated to ensure that no parts of their supply chains have inputs from Xinjiang.

That’s because President Joe Biden recently signed into law the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a bipartisan bill that essentially prohibits all imports from Xinjiang due to concerns over the alleged pervasive use of forced labor in the sprawling region of northwestern China.

The ban applies to all “goods, wares, articles and merchandise mined, produced or manufactured wholly or in part” in Xinjiang. The law states that exceptions can only be made if the importer demonstrates incontrovertibly that goods it’s trying to bring stateside from the region were not made with forced labor – a high burden of proof that could only be met if U.S. Customs and Border Protection certifies the imports as such based on “clear and convincing evidence.”

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who introduced the legislation with Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ) and James P. McGovern (D-MA), said the new prohibitions will ensure that goods made with the slave labor of the Uyghur people and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang do not enter the United States. 

“This is the most important and impactful action taken thus far by the United States to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for their use of slave labor,” Rubio said in a statement.

He continued: “It will fundamentally change our relationship with Beijing. This law should also ensure that Americans no longer unknowingly buy goods made by slaves in China. I look forward to working with the Biden Administration and my colleagues to ensure the new law is implemented correctly and enforced properly.”

Today, I signed the bipartisan Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The United States will continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure supply chains are free from the use of forced labor — including from Xinjiang and other parts of China. pic.twitter.com/kd4fk2CvmJ

— President Biden (@POTUS) December 23, 2021

Uyghurs – a Turkic ethnic group in Xinjiang who are mostly Muslim – along with other minority groups primarily of the Muslim faith in the region have reportedly been detained and forced to work in labor camps by China’s government.

The U.S., other countries and human rights groups have accused China of things like unjustly imprisoning Uyghurs (and others) and forcing sterilization on them – treatment that, taken with other alleged abuses, amounts to genocide, according to critics and human rights experts.

Last year, the Biden administration formally declared that the treatment of the Uyghurs by China’s government is genocide. Estimates by scholars indicate that more than one million people in Xinjiang have been detained in camps. Some of those have been released, but others have been sent to prison and made to work in factories, critics say.

Xinjiang provides approximately 85% of the cotton from China, which produces more than 20% of the world’s supply of cotton. The region also makes about half the world’s supply of an important element for solar panels. This significant position in global supply chains had led some business groups and large companies, including Apple, to lobby against restrictions on imports from Xinjiang.

“Some people are going to say, ‘Oh my gosh, if we don’t do business with Xinjiang, the cost of products goes up,’” Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Long Island, NY, said in a December statement. “Well, that’s too damn bad. This should shock everyone’s conscience.”

When bans on select products from Xinjiang like cotton and tomatoes were previously announced, some promo products suppliers said they’d taken extensive steps to make sure their supply networks aren’t tainted by forced labor and/or tied to Xinjiang.  

“We’ve spent the past several years moving out of China due to the (import tariffs from the Trump administration), so many changes were already in motion,” Jeremy Lott, president/CEO of SanMar (asi/84863), the largest supplier in the North American promo industry, told ASI Media at the time. “As we became more aware of the issue of forced labor in Xinjiang, it only gave us more reason to seek other sourcing destinations.”