Companies including Nike, Coca-Cola and Apple lobbied Congress in an attempt to weaken that provision, claiming that the passage of the bill could wreak havoc on already crippled supply chains. Roughly one in five cotton garments sold globally contains cotton or yarn from Xinjiang, and the region produces a significant portion of the world’s polysilicon, which is used to make solar panels and smartphones.
“It is a piece of legislation that will impose substantial constraints and costs on corporations that have been operating their supply chains in ways that ignore labor rights with impunity,” said Scott Nova, the executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent labor rights organization. “And it is vehemently opposed by powerful corporations across industrial sectors.”
Representative Thomas Suozzi, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Uyghur Caucus, acknowledged in an interview that a number of counterarguments had quietly loomed over the bill, from corporate lobbyists nervous about profits and supply chains to climate hawks worried about endangering the nation’s access to solar panels.
“To all those things, I say, ‘That’s too damn bad,’” Mr. Suozzi said. “We have to do this. This is so egregious that we’ll have to just figure out another solution. We’re just going to have to innovate our way around it. We can’t allow this to continue.”
The legislation passed the House in September 2020 by a 406-to-3 vote. At that time, it faced headwinds in the Senate, especially on the Banking Committee, where some lawmakers were sensitive to corporate concerns about a stringent reporting requirement embedded in the text.
That provision, which would require companies to disclose the extent of a wide range of activities conducted in the Xinjiang region, was ultimately stripped out of the Senate bill, which passed unanimously in July.
How the Supply Chain Crisis Unfolded
Card 1 of 9The pandemic sparked the problem. The highly intricate and interconnected global supply chain is in upheaval. Much of the crisis can be traced to the outbreak of Covid-19, which triggered an economic slowdown, mass layoffs and a halt to production. Here’s what happened next:


A reduction in shipping. With fewer goods being made and fewer people with paychecks to spend at the start of the pandemic, manufacturers and shipping companies assumed that demand would drop sharply. But that proved to be a mistake, as demand for some items would surge.


Demand for protective gear spiked. In early 2020, the entire planet suddenly needed surgical masks and gowns. Most of these goods were made in China. As Chinese factories ramped up production, cargo vessels began delivering gear around the globe.


Then, a shipping container shortage. Shipping containers piled up in many parts of the world after they were emptied. The result was a shortage of containers in the one country that needed them the most: China, where factories would begin pumping out goods in record volumes


Demand for durable goods increased. The pandemic shifted Americans’ spending from eating out and attending events to office furniture, electronics and kitchen appliances – mostly purchased online. The spending was also encouraged by government stimulus programs.


Strained supply chains. Factory goods swiftly overwhelmed U.S. ports. Swelling orders further outstripped the availability of shipping containers, and the cost of shipping a container from Shanghai to Los Angeles skyrocketed tenfold.




But the measure languished, with neither the House nor the Senate interested in taking up the other’s bill. The House advanced a larger China-focused measure that included a version of the Uyghur legislation with the reporting mandate intact, but the Senate declined to take it up.

Source: New York Times

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