2022 June 16th Will US Ban Xinjiang Import Goods from China?

Criticizing about Xinjiang human rights was one of the most controversial topics in the last year for international media, ban Xinjiang Import Goods and now the US government is ready to takes the next step to enforce more economic sanction against China by rising the bar of import exemption. If it really happen, how would it affect the international trade?

US Government and Media

Back to the December of 2021, the Biden government passed what so-called Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act to virtually banning all Xinjiang import goods including the cotton. However, Xinjiang, as the most essential source of cotton supply region in China, provide more than 2/3 of the cotton for China’s textile industry on both domestic and international market. In another word, US implementing economic sanctions on the Xinjiang cotton could mean a terminate of garment import from China. It is interesting that even though a number of world famous brands like Nike and H&M respond to stop using Xinjiang cotton, China still holds the largest share of US apparel imports market of 37.76% in 2021, and this number actually increases compared to 2020.

Without seeing any huge influence of the textile import of China in 2021, there is going to be another big action in the late June of 2022 which aimed to rising the bar of obtaining a verifiable exemption on the Xinjiang cotton import related products to restrict the trade. During the interview with Elva Muneton, Customs and Border Protection (CBP)’s acting executive director for the UFLPA Implementation Task Force, she disclosed that CBP is also authorized to issue penalties in the case of fraud proof.

China

While the US government and Western media like Reuters are all spreading the news about implementing stricter sanctions regarding to the Xinjiang issue, Beijing and the China mainstream media tend to not emphasize and comment on this action. Take guancha.cn as an example, one of the most popular China’s left-wing news reporter, has not released any official news about the coming sanction claimed by US government. The same as the other newspaper, not many articles or criticisms have mentioned about this late rising topic.

Conclusion

If the US government is going to enforce stricter and harsher sanctions against Xinjiang cotton goods in the coming June, the textile or apparel industry in both China and US will be put under incredible challenges, and some businesses which heavily rely on importing from China might experience great difficulties and even the cut off from the product supply. However, since Beijing and the mainstream newspapers have not given a clear response, the situation might not turn as terrible as some of us expected. Juntu will keep track on the news and give the most prompt messages to our customers and subscribers if there is anything.