The UFLPA and Small American Importers: Unintended Consequences or Intended Results?
In 2020, our firm persuaded U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to lift a forced labor order against a South American client. The allegation against our client was false, but proving it took three independent audits and close to a year of advocacy. During that time the company was shut out of a critical U.S. market, and its American customers saw their supply of its products sharply reduced. CBP eventually revoked the order, but the revocation did nothing to repair what the company and its customers lost while the order stood. That case involved a Withhold Release Order (WRO), not the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which took effect in June 2022. American importers face the same risk under the UFLPA, and they must also overcome an exceptionally demanding statutory presumption.
Since the UFLPA took effect, the trade community has quietly debated what the law is really meant to do. One view holds that it weeds out products made with Xinjiang-linked forced labor while legitimate U.S.-China trade continues. The other holds that it has become a mechanism to curtail American economic engagement with China. Four years of enforcement have made that question harder to dismiss, particularly for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that lack the resources and bargaining power of their larger competitors.
Under the UFLPA, goods mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), or by entities on the UFLPA Entity List, are presumed to be made with forced labor. They are barred from entry unless the statutory requirements for an exception are met. Importers can also establish that merchandise falls outside the law's scope. But where CBP suspects a covered connection, the importer must assemble the records to resolve the issue. That often means proving what happened several tiers down a supply chain controlled by businesses that have little incentive, and sometimes little ability, to help.
The UFLPA also did away with the need for CBP first to investigate and issue a WRO covering the goods in question. Congress deliberately made the restriction stronger than the traditional forced labor regime under 19 U.S.C. § 1307. Under that regime, CBP can issue a WRO when information reasonably, but not conclusively, indicates forced labor. Under the UFLPA, the presumption attaches by statute to covered Xinjiang or Entity List connections. Those differences shape what evidence an importer gathers and what kind of challenge it makes. Less attention has gone to what they mean for American companies whose production depends on Chinese manufacturers but whose purchasing power gives them little control over those manufacturers' suppliers.
Where UFLPA Enforcement Stands in 2026
The UFLPA operates within a wider campaign to change the United States' trading relationship with China. Section 301 tariffs, export controls, tighter scrutiny of Chinese investment, and enforcement against tariff evasion have all pushed in the same general direction. Forced labor enforcement has been tightening since Congress repealed the old "consumptive demand" exception to the forced labor ban in 2016. The Trump administration's June 2026 executive order on customs enforcement expressly made forced labor imports an enforcement priority alongside undervaluation, misclassification, and illegal transshipment. Whatever one thinks of these policies, a return to the trade environment of ten years ago is not in sight.
A large corporation can sometimes pay to investigate its entire supply chain, demand records from its manufacturers, and move production when necessary. A smaller importer's orders often make up a tiny fraction of its factory's business. It cannot dictate who supplies that factory's copper, cotton, aluminum, or electronic components, and it cannot necessarily afford to move production to Mexico, Vietnam, or the United States. Yet the UFLPA expects both companies to produce convincing documentation.
1. Forced Labor Enforcement Is No Longer Confined to Xinjiang Cotton
The CBP UFLPA Enforcement Statistics Dashboard shows that CBP has stopped billions of dollars' worth of merchandise for UFLPA review since the law took effect in June 2022. CBP has denied entry to more than half of the import transactions it stopped for UFLPA review. The numbers require some care. In January 2026, CBP redesigned the dashboard to count individual import transactions rather than whole entries, so newer counts cannot be compared mechanically with older shipment totals. That distinction offers little comfort to an importer whose merchandise cannot be released until CBP's concerns are resolved.
When the UFLPA took effect, public attention centered on cotton and apparel, tomatoes, and polysilicon. In 2024, the government added PVC, aluminum, and seafood to its high-priority sectors. In August 2025, it added caustic soda, copper, lithium, red dates, and steel. CBP's scrutiny extends beyond those categories. Electronics, vehicle components, flooring, and industrial products can raise UFLPA questions because of material sources far removed from the final assembly plant. The problem also reaches past goods shipped directly from China, and the dashboard records enforcement involving merchandise arriving from Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and other countries.
2. The Entity List Keeps Growing, and a Clean Screen Proves Little
The UFLPA Entity List began with 20 entities in 2022 and had grown to 144 by August 2025. Forty-three more were added in the summer of 2026, and three more were added effective October 29, bringing the total to 190. The October additions include BGI Genomics and two related biotechnology companies. The Federal Register notice contains the updated list and the government's stated basis for those additions.
An expanding list helps importers identify some risks, but it offers no assurance that an unlisted company is safe. Suppliers use subsidiaries, affiliates, trading companies, alternate English names, and sometimes entirely different Chinese names. A screen that produces no exact name match may tell an importer very little about where its materials actually come from. Suppose a shipment involves a trading company, a subcontractor, and a separate raw-material processor. Each additional tier is another place where a documented supply chain can turn into an unsupported assumption.
3. There Is Still Too Little Interest in What SMEs Can Actually Do
At CBP's 2023 Trade Facilitation and Cargo Security Summit, officials acknowledged the frustration of SMEs trying to prove that forced labor was absent from their supply chains. We had already heard a harder message in informal conversations at the previous year's summit. CBP officials did not regard it as their responsibility to make agency-held information available to importers simply to help them comply. My concern deepened during a 2023 exchange in which a colleague and I spoke with congressional committee officials about improving implementation of the law. We offered examples from our practice of how the required documentation could threaten the viability of smaller importers, and the officials did not seem especially interested. In that conversation, "improving implementation" appeared to mean information that would increase detentions and justify refusals. It did not appear to mean measures that would help legitimate importers establish compliance.
Those conversations took place in 2022 and 2023, and CBP has since improved its public guidance and procedures. But the importer must still produce records about businesses it does not own, personnel it does not employ, and sourcing decisions it did not make. If those records fall short, the importer bears the cost of goods sitting at the port, lost sales, storage, and disrupted customer commitments. A small business can have a substantial share of its working capital tied up in a single shipment. Government officials sometimes talk about these cases as evidentiary disputes. For the importer whose goods are sitting in a warehouse, they are often cash-flow emergencies.
4. Your Chinese Manufacturer Is Often the Weakest Link
CBP's demand for supply chain documentation runs from raw materials through the finished product, and Chinese suppliers frequently resist providing it. Some do not know who supplies the factories they buy from, and others know perfectly well and consider that information proprietary. A factory questionnaire can be completed to tell the American customer what it wants to hear, and a Bill of Materials can omit the details that matter. Company names, addresses, and postal codes can be entered in ways that obscure where a product actually came from.
Manufacturing agreements with audit and record-production provisions help, but a provision that looks good on paper is worth little if the supplier never intends to comply. I would not assume a Chinese factory will open its books to an independent auditor or an American customer merely because the contract says it must. Smaller importers rarely have the purchasing power to insist on that level of transparency once production has begun. A threat to take their business elsewhere carries little weight with a factory that has dozens of other customers.
Chinese law makes this harder. Since 2021, the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law and related measures have made some suppliers reluctant to cooperate with foreign compliance requests. China's April 2026 supply chain security regulations created additional risks around actions Beijing regards as harmful to its supply chains. Under Article 13 of those regulations, Chinese authorities can take action against supply chain investigations and information-gathering activities conducted in China in violation of Chinese law. The regulations do not impose a blanket prohibition on lawful supplier audits or due diligence, but the legal and political risks of sensitive investigations have increased.
A request for worker, sourcing, and subcontractor information can look routine to a U.S. compliance officer and legally or politically hazardous to the Chinese company receiving it. American law demands information the foreign supplier refuses to provide, and the American importer is still the one that has to persuade CBP. For an SME that cannot easily replace its supplier, the choice can come down to accepting substantial customs risk or disrupting the business that keeps it alive.
5. Better Government Tools Have Not Solved the Evidence Problem
CBP has improved how importers deal with these problems. Its Forced Labor Portal, launched January 21, 2026, is mandatory for UFLPA applicability reviews and exception requests and for specified submissions under other forced labor authorities. Its June 2026 operational guidance brings UFLPA, WRO, Finding, and certain other procedures into one document, with process maps and examples of supporting records. The revised dashboard provides more detailed industry, country, and tariff-heading data than the old version did. I welcome these improvements, because importers now have clearer instructions and a better way to submit their records. But a modern filing system does nothing for an importer whose manufacturer refuses to identify its own suppliers, cannot locate old production records, or is worried about Chinese law. The government can tell an SME to trace its supply chain to the raw-material stage, but it cannot make the Chinese factory turn over the records.
CBP also, understandably, withholds much of the company-specific intelligence and investigative material it uses to target shipments. An importer may never see the information that caused the agency to examine its merchandise. There are sound law-enforcement and confidentiality reasons for some of that secrecy, but the commercial effect can be severe for a company trying to vet a supplier before placing an order. The government can do better without publishing confidential investigations. More usable information about aliases and related entities would help honest importers find and avoid dishonest suppliers. So would clearer product-specific examples of acceptable documentation and more consistent explanations of why submissions fail. Whether the government treats that kind of help as part of enforcement or as an administrative courtesy matters a great deal to SMEs.
How Importers Can Reduce Their UFLPA Risk
A model policy and a stack of signed supplier promises will not keep a shipment from being stopped. Importers need to gather usable evidence early and understand the process before merchandise is held. Here is where I would focus.
Know Which Law CBP Is Enforcing
The UFLPA operates alongside the prohibition in 19 U.S.C. § 1307, the WRO and Finding procedures in 19 CFR 12.42–12.45, and applicable provisions of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. Their procedures and evidentiary requirements differ. Read CBP's June 2026 guidance before importing high-risk goods. Identify the authority cited in any detention or exclusion notice before choosing a response.
Trace the Supply Chain Before You Sign the Manufacturing Agreement
Start with the manufacturer's actual legal identity and location, then identify its subcontractors and the sources of the materials that matter for your product. A Chinese manufacturer's English trading name is not enough. Obtain Chinese legal names, addresses, production locations, Bills of Material, purchasing records, and information about the suppliers of important raw materials. Screen the parties against the UFLPA Entity List, including available aliases and affiliates. Recheck the list periodically, and remember that a name's absence from it is no government assurance of compliance.
Your manufacturing agreement should require the supplier to identify subcontractors, retain records, report material changes, and cooperate with verification. It should also provide sensible remedies if the supplier withholds information or an undisclosed supply chain connection gets your goods detained. Negotiate these terms before you pay the deposit, not after the goods are sitting at a U.S. port. Make the terms realistic under Chinese law, because a promise the supplier cannot legally or practically perform is poor protection.
Do Not Confuse Certifications with Proof
Supplier questionnaires and certifications have value as a first screen, but they are no substitute for an investigation. Check what the supplier tells you against production records, invoices, transport documents, company registrations, and independent information where available. Look for unexplained intermediaries, gaps in the chain of custody, inconsistent names, and factories whose claimed production capacity does not fit the merchandise being supplied. This is why we have long advised importers confronting forced labor risks to "don't trust and do verify."
The amount and type of evidence differ by product, because cotton, aluminum, tomatoes, electronics, and automotive components present different tracing problems. Scientific testing, including isotopic or DNA analysis where suitable, can supplement records, and commercial shipping databases and supply chain mapping software can help uncover hidden relationships. None of these tools produces a complete or infallible picture. A thick report is no substitute for convincing evidence, so pay for the method that answers your actual sourcing question.
Remember That Vietnam Is Not a Forced Labor Escape Hatch
The UFLPA reaches covered goods and materials regardless of where final assembly takes place. Country-of-origin rules for tariffs and the UFLPA's supply chain inquiry answer different questions. Suppose a Vietnamese manufacturer uses an input produced by a listed Chinese entity. Moving your assembly line there leaves you with the cost of the move and the same UFLPA problem. If you are considering China + 1, find out where the new factory gets its components before you assume the move solves anything.
Have Your Detention File Ready Before the Shipment Leaves
For higher-risk merchandise, gather the evidence while the supplier is still making the product. Identify each material and production step, and keep supplier records, invoices, transportation documents, and translations in an organized file. Train your purchasing and logistics personnel to request the records while the supplier still has an incentive to cooperate, because much of this information becomes difficult or impossible to retrieve after production ends. Freight forwarders and customs brokers should understand their responsibilities, but do not assume your broker has independently investigated the underlying suppliers.
Under 19 CFR 151.16, CBP generally must make a final admissibility determination within 30 days after merchandise is presented for examination. If CBP fails to do so, the merchandise is treated as excluded for purposes of filing a protest, unless a longer period is specifically authorized by law. Do not count on additional time to reconstruct months of production and raw-material purchases. CBP's review is easier when the importer supplies a concise explanation of the chain of custody, an exhibit index, and documents establishing the facts rather than a disorganized mass of records.
Understand the Two Different UFLPA Challenges
An applicability review asks CBP to find that merchandise falls outside the UFLPA's scope because the relevant supply chain does not involve Xinjiang or a listed entity. It needs records tracing each relevant stage to show the merchandise lacks the connection CBP alleges. An exception request accepts that the statutory presumption applies and seeks to rebut it by meeting the UFLPA's demanding requirements, including clear and convincing evidence that the goods were not produced with forced labor. These are different claims. Confusing them risks making the wrong submission and wasting time the importer does not have. An importer should not choose one merely because it looks easier to file. Our earlier article on making claims under the UFLPA explains the distinction in more detail.
Since January 21, 2026, these requests must be made through CBP's Forced Labor Portal. Filing in the portal does not remove the need for prompt communication with the responsible CBP personnel or for meeting applicable deadlines. If CBP excludes merchandise, the importer should consider the protest procedures under 19 U.S.C. § 1514 and 19 CFR Part 174. A seizure invokes different procedures, including those under 19 CFR Part 171. The details and deadlines depend on what CBP has actually done.
Plan for the Financial Consequences, Even if You Win
A successful review of one shipment is not a blanket clearance for future entries. Keep the records current, particularly if a manufacturer changes subcontractors or material sources. Where warranted, a smaller initial commercial shipment can limit the value exposed to detention. A successful entry, however, proves neither compliance nor that later shipments will be released.
Learn when detained merchandise can be exported at your expense, before exclusion or seizure makes that option unavailable, because storage, demurrage, return freight, and lost customers can overwhelm the value of the goods. Participation in CTPAT can provide some processing advantages, but it does not relieve an importer of proving admissibility. Nor does a binding ruling on tariff classification or country of origin under 19 CFR Part 177 amount to general UFLPA clearance.
Fix Genuine Forced Labor Problems and Diversify Where You Can
If credible evidence of forced labor emerges, address it. Where effective remediation is possible, pursue it with safeguards for the affected workers, and otherwise change suppliers. Producing more paperwork to conceal the problem is no form of compliance, and it creates additional risk for the importer.
Diversification can reduce dependence on risky materials and uncooperative manufacturers, but moving production is itself a complicated and costly business decision. Our article on China supply chain restructuring discusses some of the legal traps. We have seen companies abandon Chinese suppliers because of tariffs or political risk, only to run into delays and unexpected expenses in the replacement country. SMEs should weigh those costs alongside tariff exposure, documentation expenses, delayed shipments, and the prospect that CBP will refuse the goods. A move can be the right decision, but it should follow a serious review of sourcing and compliance. It should not rest on an assumption that any address outside China is safer.
Why the Costs to Small Importers Are Getting Harder to Call Unintended
Stopping goods made with forced labor is a worthy objective. The extensive reporting on abuses involving Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang gave Congress good reason to act, and a prohibition that cannot be enforced is not much of a prohibition. My concern is for American companies that have not participated in those abuses and do not want to. Those companies still cannot get the documents the government demands from businesses halfway around the world.
The UFLPA has become part of a broader effort to reduce American reliance on Chinese supply chains. That does not prove Congress enacted the law to injure legitimate trade, but it makes the costs imposed on American SMEs increasingly difficult to dismiss as unintended or temporary. After four years, the government knows its rules can leave smaller importers unable to prove what happened at a raw-material supplier they have never dealt with. The instructions have improved. The importer's ability to obtain the evidence has improved much less.
A law can be tough on forced labor without treating small American importers as expendable. If a large company can pay for a costly supply chain investigation while a smaller competitor cannot, the government should care about the competitive consequences. A legitimate importer that loses access to goods because its supplier refuses to cooperate also deserves more serious consideration than it currently receives. At the extreme, that importer's choice comes down to finding a new supplier, abandoning the U.S. market for that product, or closing the business.
Maybe this debate would look different if American SMEs could simply bring home the manufacturing they moved to China decades ago. That ship left the harbor long ago, and it isn't coming back on demand. Pretending otherwise will not make American importers any more capable of complying with the UFLPA.
If you import from China, determine now whether you can document where your goods and their principal inputs actually come from. Find out which suppliers will provide the records and which will not. If a Chinese manufacturer refuses to cooperate, deal with that before you pay for the next shipment. Once the merchandise is sitting at a U.S. port, the supplier's refusal is your problem, not CBP's.
Author's note: References to Chinese suppliers and manufacturers also apply to suppliers in other countries whose goods have a Xinjiang or UFLPA Entity List connection, regardless of where the finished products originate.
