Forced labour import bans are becoming a prominent tool in the ‘fight against human trafficking’. These laws allow customs officers to prevent foreign-made goods from entering a country if they suspect forced labour was used in their production. Their popularity is growing among governments in the global North, and among civil society organisations concerned with ending labour exploitation in global supply chains.
But before we jump on the ban wagon, we should pause to consider some of the lessons labour advocates have learned from observing over 20 years of enforcing anti-trafficking-law. These include: the impact of the provenance of governance instruments on their effectiveness; the ways instruments are used for a range of political ends; the ways they create collateral damage; and how their use lends them legitimacy, even when they are deeply flawed.
Forced labour bans: protecting rights or markets?
At present, only the US, Canada and Mexico have forced labour import bans in place. The EU Parliament, which approved a ban of its own last April, is taking the single market in that direction as well. All these bans target forced labour and involve customs officials. But they differ significantly in their origins, how they were designed, and how they are administered.
Section 307 of the 1930 US Tariff Act is the big daddy of forced labour import bans. It authorises US border and customs officials – called Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – to impound goods they suspect were produced using forced labour.
But section 307 was not enacted to prevent human trafficking. It was created to prevent unfair competition. The explicit purpose of this provision was to protect US producers and US workers from being undercut by foreign suppliers who were importing goods made cheap by forced labour.
This purpose is further made clear by the fact that section 307 provided an exception that allowed certain forced labour-produced goods to be imported if they were not produced domestically “in such quantities … to meet the consumptive demands”. Between 2001 and 2015, not a single enforcement case of section 307 was brought to court.
The Trump Administration, pursuing its “America first” agenda, directed CBP to enforce section 307 more stringently, particularly against Chinese imports
This non-enforcement ended after the Obama administration persuaded Congress to repeal this exception in 2015, signalling the additional purpose of ending forced labour worldwide. But the protectionist origins of section 307 remained. The Trump Administration, pursuing its “America first” agenda, directed CBP to enforce section 307 more stringently, particularly against Chinese imports. It also used its economic muscle to persuade Canada and Mexico, two countries highly dependent on trade with the US, to implement forced labour import bans, widening the front of this trade-based attack.
Further moves to impede Chinese imports were to follow. One of the few bipartisan 'unicorns' in American politics, the US government adopted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) in 2021. It presumes that goods produced in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China, or by certain entities with economic ties to that region, are made with forced labour.
The European Union, while neither as geographically proximate to or economically dependent on the US as Canada and Mexico, has also imposed a forced labour import ban. Fears of the US’s retreat from multilateralism and the rise of China, as well as pressure from civil society organisations concerned to end forced labour in supply chains, help to explain why the EU adopted a regulation prohibiting products made with forced labour from the single market.
Civil society: hoping protectionist measures can lead to a human rights outcome
States in the global North are designing and enforcing forced labour bans with the primary aim of protecting their own markets and workers.
Given this, why do so many human rights, corporate accountability and workers’ rights organisations continue to support them? I suggest two driving factors: a disappointment with voluntary measures, and a hope that bans can be built upon.
Forced labour import bans are a big stick with extraterritorial reach. They appeal to civil society organisations because voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives, such as codes of conduct and social auditing, have done little to change the exploitive business practices of lead firms.
Advocacy groups see import bans as having the potential to disrupt value chains and impose direct economic costs on suppliers and producers who exploit forced labour. Their goal is to use import bans to place “significant commercial pressure on companies to address forced labour in their supply chains or risk losing access to valuable export markets”.
A big stick, but is it a dangerous one?
But do forced labour bans exert enough pressure to change behaviour long-term? And what are their side effects? We must turn to the US ban to try to answer these questions, since both Canada and Mexico’s forced labour import bans are relatively untested and the EU regulation is not yet in effect.
CBP is authorised to prevent goods from entering the US based on a reasonable suspicion of forced labour. The CBP can act upon submissions, which can be anonymous, or on its own initiative based on evidence in the public domain. Where it has a reasonable suspicion, CBP can issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO) – a type of pre-notification that gives importers an opportunity to provide evidence to overcome the suspicion. WROs can be issued against a shipment, a supplier, a sector, or goods from a particular region.
Importers whose shipments are blocked at the border by a WRO can re-export the shipment to a destination without import prohibitions. Where CBP finds conclusive evidence of a violation of section 307 of the US Tariff Act, it adopts a ‘Finding’ and seizes affected products remaining within its jurisdiction.
The vast majority of WROs issued by CBP have been based on complaints, some of which were lodged by competitors. Most have been against ‘foreign’ suppliers. No WROs have been issued against large US brands or retailers. As of January 2025, CBP was enforcing 51 WROs and nine Findings. Of these, 36 WROs and five Findings pertained to China. Four WROs and one Finding concerned fishing vessels. The rest concerned Latin America and the Caribbean (two WROs, three Findings), Africa (four WROs), and Asia and the Pacific (five WROS).
These numbers pale when compared with the number of shipments detained or seized under the UFLPA. Between June 2022 and December 2024, CBP detained 12,666 shipments with a cumulative value of $3.68bn. But while the single largest number of shipments detained was imported directly from China (5,363), such goods only constituted 11% of the shipment value. Instead, the bulk of the shipment value came from merchandise imported from Malaysia (43%), Vietnam (28%), and Thailand (14%).
Significantly, not all shipments that were detained were seized and forfeited. Indeed, about 43% of the detained shipments were eventually released. The shipment value of the goods released amounted to almost $2.8bn, amounting to 75% of the shipment value of the goods seized.
There is evidence that bans can have unintended effects that are harmful to workers
A Rand Corporation report commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security concluded that the UFLPA alone cannot change China’s policy on forced labour in the XUAR, although the law helped to limit US imports of goods made with forced labour, prevent US complicity in other countries’ labour abuses, and send a strong policy signal.
What about the impact of WROs on workers in situations of forced labour? After reviewing nine in-depth case studies of the use of WROs, the Remedy Project claimed that the US import ban is a “catalyst” for industry reforms to end forced labour. But, while it is clear some businesses changed their practices in the short term because of an WRO, less is known on their long-term impacts.
There is also evidence that bans can have unintended effects that are harmful to workers. For example, there is nothing to stop a lead firm in a global supply chain from simply cutting ties with a supplier who has been issued a WRO. Some might say that’s the whole point – exploitative firms should be starved of contracts until they close – but without a safety net, workers are sacrificed under this approach. They lose their jobs and wages with no guarantee that their next employer (if there is one) will be any better.
Part of the problem of assessing the impact of the US forced labour import ban is that the enforcement strategy is a matter of CBP discretion. The agency decides whether to issue a WRO against the foreign supplier, domestic importer, or a sector. It is not obliged to consult the workers who are alleged to have been subject to forced labour before issuing a ban. In deciding whether to lift a WRO after having issued it, the CBP considers whether there still is forced labour. Nothing in the law requires that provisions be made to protect workers or remediate impacts they might experience because of the WRO.
Workers’ rights advocates need to be cautious about endorsing forced labour import bans as a means of protecting workers in supply chains. While bans could, with big and, under the Trump administration, very unlikely changes, be used to assist workers, as currently drafted none of the existing bans are designed to achieve this objective.
Surely, 20 years of watching countries enforce human trafficking laws has demonstrated the need to consider the different goals legal instruments are supposed to achieve, how they are actually enforced, and their unintended consequences before choosing what to endorse.
Explore the series so far
- Ten years on, have we moved Beyond Trafficking and Slavery?
Joel Quirk, Cameron Thibos and Ella Cockbain - What helps practitioners listen to their critics?Nick Grono with Joel Quirk
- We know how to identify exploitation. Now we need to stop itKate Roberts
- Labour rights won’t make criminal gangs go away
Marika McAdam - Twenty years of slow progress: Is anti-trafficking changing?Borislav Gerasimov
- Can progressives re-capture anti-trafficking from the right?Dina Haynes
- Why do anti-trafficking donors fund their critics?Ryan Heman
- The UN’s missed chance to lead on anti-traffickingMike Dottridge
- Law enforcement alone will never stop modern slavery
Klára Skřivánková - Mistakes happen in anti-trafficking. We must learn from themErin Williamson
- How US funding built a brittle economy in anti-trafficking
Chris Ash, Sophie Otiende, Allen Kiconco - County lines: an ‘appalling failure of child protection’
SPACE (Stop & Prevent Adolescent Criminal Exploitation) - Global inequality is the World Bank’s elephant in the roomAlf Gunvald Nilsen
- Do forced labour bans protect workers in supply chains?Judy Fudge
- Are grooming gangs the far right’s golden goose?Louise Raw
- We can't keep ignoring human trafficking in warJulia Muraszkiewicz
- Could anti-trafficking survive without victims to rescue?Hannah Lewis
