President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and Department of Labor announced a new strategy on Tuesday to increase protections for American workers and target Chinese imports that use forced labor.
In a Tuesday press release, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the Trump administration was taking steps to increase the country’s national security by adding copper, lithium, steel, caustic soda, and red dates as “high-priority sectors for enforcement” under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was passed in 2022 to target goods made with forced labor in the Xinjiang region of China.
The Department of Labor confirmed that the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force has unveiled a new 2025 UFLPA enforcement strategy to “strengthen enforcement” of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and stop products made with Chinese forced labor from being sent to the United States.
“America First means keeping foreign goods made with forced labor off our shelves and ensuring American businesses aren’t put at a disadvantage,” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said. “This joint strategy equips our enforcement agencies with the tools they need to crack down on China and other bad actors whose trade abuses distort markets and hurt American workers.”
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The Department of Labor explained that the new strategy includes updates to the UFLPA Entity List, which currently has 144 entities.
The Department of Homeland Security noted that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has stopped over 16,700 shipments as part of the enforcement of the UFLPA. The department said that over 10,000 of the shipments have been denied entry into the United States, preventing nearly $900 million in illegal goods from entering the country.
In Tuesday’s statement, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, “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.”
“The Trump administration is taking action,” Noem added. “The use of slave labor is repulsive and we will hold Chinese companies accountable for abuses and eliminate threats its forced labor practices pose to our prosperity.”
