The Chinese Communist government announced “countermeasures” on Wednesday against the U.S. designation of more Chinese entities under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA).
China denounced the U.S. listings as “illegal,” without addressing the actual issue of slave labor extracted from oppressed minorities like the Uyghurs.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) added 43 more Chinese companies to the list of entities presumed to use slavery last Friday. The affected industries included apparel, agriculture, and aluminum.
“The American worker must not be undercut and cheated by foreign companies that use slave labor. Our job is to defend the Homeland, and that includes protecting our citizens from unfair competition that not only disadvantages Americans, but harms human dignity,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said when announcing the expanded list.
China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) responded on Wednesday with:
countermeasures that include strengthening export controls on dual-use items related to UAVs and their key components and technologies to the US; placing six US entities on the countermeasure list for ‘assisting and supporting the US in imposing illegal sanctions related to China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region’; placing a US compliance testing company on the countermeasure list; and initiating a national security investigation into the import of printing and copying office equipment.
“China has decided to strengthen export controls on drone-related dual-use items to the US, in order to safeguard national security and interests and fulfill international obligations such as non-proliferation,” MOFCOM added.
The six U.S. companies targeted for assisting the “illegal” anti-slavery sanctions included Applied DNA Sciences, Inc., Stratum Reservoir, LLC, Altana Technologies, Inc., the Responsible Business Alliance, Verite Group, Inc., and Human Rights in China.
Instead of addressing China’s horrific use of slave labor, MOFCOM accused the U.S. of “seriously violating international law and the basic norms governing international relations and gravely infringing upon China’s sovereignty, security and development interests.”
The U.S. has already banned importation of some of the products China supposedly restricted with its “countermeasures,” including many Chinese-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
China’s sanctions against U.S. companies that perform compliance testing could have more bite. China’s State Administration for Market Regulation banned U.S. firms from conducting follow-up factory inspections for the China Compulsory Certification system (CCC), a regime of mandatory safety inspections. Under the new rules, American electronics manufacturers will be required to hire non-American auditors and subcontractors to meet CCC standards.
CNBC described China’s actions on Wednesday as its “broadest package of trade countermeasures since last October’s truce,” and part of China’s effort to set the stage for dictator Xi Jinping’s planned visit to Washington in September.
The Chinese countermeasures seem designed to increase compliance costs on American exporters, and to mirror some of the restrictions the United States has placed on Chinese technology due to security concerns.
“Both sides are attempting to come up with new approaches, new sanctions, new limitations, where they can then potentially horse trade,” Z-Ben Advisors founder and managing director Peter Alexander told CNBC.
Alexander predicted some of the sanctions and restrictions on both sides would be “ironed out” by the time Xi makes his trip to Washington, and both parties would generally strive to maintain the trade “truce” they reached during Xi’s meeting with President Donald Trump in South Korea last year.