Richard Mojica Discusses UFLPA's First 8 Months in Sourcing Journal
Subtitle
"UFLPA: What Insiders Say About Forced-Labor Law's First 8 Months"
Sourcing Journal
Richard Mojica discussed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), a law put into effect eight months ago, which serves to prevent firms from trafficking goods made under coercion by Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim minorities into the U.S. from China. The goal of UFLPA is to force companies to redirect their sourcing out of a region that is using systematic forced labor as part of a campaign of crimes against humanity; another goal is compliance with U.S. law, which has outlawed the import of forced labor goods, no matter their origin, since the establishment of the 1930 Tariff Act. Mojica noted that the UFLPA has motivated companies – predominantly those related to textiles and solar, both targets of the law, in addition to the Withhold Release Orders (WROs) that preceded it, to "elevate Chinese forced labor as a top compliance issue. "That has prompted companies to conduct additional diligence on mapping their supply chains, conducting first- and second-level reviews of suppliers, and so on. In some cases, it has also prompted companies to reshuffle their supply chains and move away from certain supplier relationships [or] entirely from China. And so, if you view it from that perspective, I think the UFLPA has certainly been a very powerful tool to affect change," Mojica said.