The report particularly highlights China’s use of forced labor across clean energy manufacturing supply chains, highlighting the need for the United States to bolster its own manufacturing capabilities.
The Ministry of Labor New reports It documents the existence of forced and child labor around the world and draws attention to how many products are made using exploitative labor practices.
The report outlines many industries that rely on forced and child labor, but A little media attention For insights into the prevalence of these practices in the production of clean energy technologies like solar panels and electric vehicles, an industry currently dominated by China and which the report says relies on forced and child labor in dozens of sectors.
Indeed, the report accuses China of using child labor to manufacture products like textiles and fireworks, and children are forced to make products like bricks, electronics, and toys, as well as produce cotton. Meanwhile, the report reveals that China uses adult forced labor to produce everything from aluminum and artificial flowers to Christmas decorations, footwear, and hair products.
“However, the report specifically highlights how China’s solar, electric vehicle and battery supply chains rely on forced labor. The report says that China uses forced labor to produce metallurgical grade silicon and polysilicon, which are essential to making solar PV products. China also uses materials made with forced labor for downstream products such as lithium-ion batteries, solar PV ingots, solar PV wafers, solar cells and solar modules.”
But China isn’t just keeping these exploitative practices at home: The Chinese government also oversees efforts to use both forced and child labor to extract the minerals needed for these industries. As The Hill reported: Reports:
The new report says forced labor is involved in the mining of aluminum and silicon from China, nickel from Indonesia, and cobalt from the Congo, and that child labor is also used to mine the raw materials used in cobalt, copper from the Congo and Zambia, manganese from Zambia, lithium from Zimbabwe, and indium from South Korea.
The company also highlighted labor concerns about the supply chain of certain Chinese products, alleging that Chinese-made lithium-ion batteries are produced with minerals from Congo using child and forced labor.
The findings of the Ministry of Labor survey were: Other Researchers Who Have Documented China’s Use of Forced Labor Indeed, there is a growing recognition that China is relying on these exploitative practices to fuel its clean energy production. The Heritage Foundation To Center for Strategic and International Studies We also provide our own evidence and analysis.
Despite these terrible human rights violations, Still making the wrong arguments China’s vast, heavily subsidized industry is needed to tackle climate change and reduce global emissions, solar power importers argue. Sadly, many people still U.S. efforts to counter China’s bad practices will undermine overall efforts to combat climate change.
This debate is based on the fact that China Currently leading the world in carbon dioxide emissionswhich is also pretty defeatist. Why should the world have to choose between tackling climate change and working to end forced and child labor?
The single best way for the United States to reduce its carbon footprint while limiting its exposure to products made using forced and child labor is to expand and strengthen our domestic manufacturing capacity across the entire clean energy supply chain. That means the United States needs to not only assemble electric cars and solar panels domestically, but also manufacture as many of the components needed to make them. At the same time, the United States needs to find ways to ethically source critical minerals.
On the trade front, the United States cannot hesitate to enforce its trade laws to counter China’s misconduct. This includes strengthening enforcement of the Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a landmark law that bans the entry into the United States of anything made in whole or in part in China because of evidence of forced labor in that region. The United States must also be prepared to enforce its trade laws with respect to products from the Uighur Autonomous Region of China. A string of unfair trade practices.
But the Chinese government has also proven very adept at circumventing U.S. trade restrictions. That’s why the U.S. Level the Playing Field 2.0As a result, our trade enforcement mechanisms are agile enough to counter Chinese misconduct.
Read the full Department of Labor report, “2024 List of Goods Produced with Child or Forced Labor.”
