The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) prevents US companies from importing goods made with forced labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. The UFLPA established a presumption that any goods originating from the region were made with forced labor and are therefore subject to detention by US Customs and Border Protection. Now Congress is looking to build on the UFLPA with a bipartisan act which would require publicly traded companies to disclose any links their products may have to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). A recent memo from Ropes & Gray discusses the proposed law stating:
“The SEC also would be required to adopt rules requiring an issuer, in connection with a new listing on a U.S. securities exchange, to include in its application and file with the SEC documentation indicating whether the issuer or any of its affiliates has in its supply chain goods (1) sourced from the XUAR, (2) mined, produced or manufactured wholly or in part by specified entities on the entity list published pursuant to the UFLPA or (3) produced by an entity engaged in labor transfers from the XUAR or forced labor. The issuer would be required to list the name, address and quantities sourced from each entity mining, producing or manufacturing the goods.”
Information in the disclosures would be subject to third party auditing. A similar bill was introduced in 2021 and failed to make it out of committee, but tensions with China have heightened in the past several years making the possibility of bipartisan support more likely this year.
