The US Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday announced that it would ban the import of goods from a Chinese steel manufacturer and a Chinese maker of artificial sweetener, accusing both of being involved in the use of forced labor in China’s western Xinjiang region.
The action broadens the scope of the US effort to counter products from entering the country that the government says are tied to human rights abuses.
The additions to the entity list under the US Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act marks the first time a China-based steel company or aspartame sweetener business have been targeted by US law enforcement, the department said.
Photo: AP
“Today’s actions reaffirm our commitment to eliminating forced labor from US supply chains and upholding our values of human rights for all,” US Undersecretary of Homeland Security for Policy Robert Silvers said.
“No sector is off-limits. We will continue to identify entities across industries and hold accountable those who seek to profit from exploitation and abuse,” he said.
The federal law that US President Joe Biden signed at the end of 2021 followed allegations of human rights abuses by Beijing against members of the ethnic Uighur group and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
The Chinese government has denied the accusations.
The new approach marked a shift in the US trade relationship with China to increasingly take into account national security and human rights.
Beijing has accused the US of using human rights as a pretext to suppress China’s economic growth.
Enforcement of the law initially targeted solar products, tomatoes, cotton and apparel, but over the past several months, the US government has identified new sectors for enforcement, including aluminum and seafood.
“That’s just a reflection of the fact that sadly, forced labor continues to taint all too many supply chains,” Silvers told a trade group in June when marking the two-year anniversary of the creation of the entity list. “So our enforcement net has actually been quite wide from an industry-sector perspective.”
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
RSS