Aug. 19 (UPI) -- The United States Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday it was expanding its strategy to block imports of Chinese products made with forced labor by members of the Uyghur minority group.
The department has added steel, copper, lithium, caustic soda and red dates to its list of sectors that receive heightened scrutiny because they have been deemed to be at higher risk of having been made by forced Uyghur labor. The move is the latest by U.S. officials in recent years to pressure China over its treatment of the Muslim minority Uyghurs in its northwestern Xinjiang region.
"America has a moral, economic, and national security duty to eradicate threats that endanger our nation's prosperity, including unfair trade practices that disadvantage the American people and stifle our economic growth," Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Act was signed into law in 2021 by then-President Joe Biden in response to reports of human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region. The law bans products made in the region from entering the United States under the presumption they were made by ethnic Uyghurs who were pressured into working into labor-intensive industries under the threat of detention.
