The Trump administration on Monday (Sept 14) said it will block US imports of cotton, apparel and other products from five specific entities in western China's Xinjiang region, but has shelved proposed region-wide bans on all Xinjiang-produced cotton and tomato products.
Department of Homeland Security acting Deputy Secretary Kenneth Cuccinelli said the "Withhold Release Orders" (WROs) are aimed at combating China's use of forced labour by detained Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
He said the administration was conducting more legal analysis of the region-wide import bans.
Customs and Border Protection officials told Reuters the previous week that they had prepared the broader bans on cotton, cotton textiles and tomatoes, among China's biggest commodity exports, along with the orders announced on Monday.
Two people familiar with the Trump administration's internal deliberations said that concerns concerning the broad orders and their effect on supply chains were raised by key officials, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
China also had agreed to purchase increased quantities of US cotton under the countries' Phase 1 trade deal, which could be put at risk by a US ban on imports from China's domit cotton-producing region.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said investigations into the broader import bans were still being pursued.
"Because of its unique nature, being, applying to a region as opposed to a company or a facility, we're giving that more legal analysis," Cuccinelli said. "We've not used a WRO like that in China before, and so we want to make sure that once we proceed that it will stick, so to speak."
The Withhold Release Orders allow US Customs and Border Protection to detain shipments based on suspicion of forced-labour involvement under long-standing US laws to combat human trafficking, child labour and other human rights abuses.
US President Donald Trump's administration is ratcheting up pressure on China over its treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, where the United Nations cites credible reports as saying 1 million Muslims held in camps have been put to work.
China denies mistreatment of the Uighurs and says the camps are vocational training centers needed to fight extremism.