Trump has a China trade war weapon he hasn’t picked up

President Trump has access to a powerful tool that isn’t tariffs for his trade war with China, but it isn’t clear whether China hawks will convince him to unleash it.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a U.S. law targeting forced labor that the Biden administration began enforcing in 2022, bars imports of almost all goods linked to Xinjiang, an expansive region in the west of China that is a major source of cotton, solar-panel components and minerals.

The law is in effect, but how it is put into practice is open to interpretation and subject to funding, leaving room for the Trump administration to increase enforcement.

The Biden administration blocked, at least temporarily, more than $3.5 billion in imports using the law and then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas took a personal interest in expanding what amounts to a ban list of companies found to have ties to forced labor. Volkswagen saw thousands of its vehicles held up at U.S. ports after disclosing they had included parts made by a banned company.

“I know this issue is a priority of the president, and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) will also have lots of support in Congress for vigorous UFLPA enforcement,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.), co-chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a human-rights watchdog.

But the administration is also a big tent when it comes to China, with space for hawks like Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as for Elon Musk, who has deep commercial ties to the country, making it difficult to predict how enforcement might unfold.

The value of shipments U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained under the UFLPA dropped from a monthly peak of $290.7 million in March 2024 to $9.2 million in February, according to CBP statistics. The White House has also not added to the list that singles out companies for extra scrutiny.

DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Some domestic groups hope for a crackdown from Trump.

“We’re really hopeful that they will take it even further to step up enforcement even more, because industries like ours matter and that this will help them achieve some of their key goals,” said Kimberly Glas, president of the National Council of Textile Organizations.

Uyghur groups also want a tough stance.

“No question, the Trump administration should look to increase UFLPA scrutiny of Chinese imports—everything from solar panels, to steel and aluminum, to auto parts—to protect the American worker and the American consumer,” said Louisa Greve, director of global advocacy for the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

Herculean task

Congress approved the UFLPA with near unanimous bipartisan support. The U.S. says alleged Chinese human rights violations in Xinjiang, home of the Uyghur people and other minority groups, amount to a genocide, claims China fiercely denies.

Anti-forced-labor law among U.S. allies, such as European Union legislation, bars forced labor in principle. Unlike those laws, the UFLPA explicitly singles out China for attention from CBP.

The agency under the law must presume any goods whose production can be traced to Xinjiang are made with forced labor. Under Biden, CBP and its backers heavily publicized enforcement efforts, including the use of novel technologies such as isotopic testing that looks for chemical markers to determine, for example, whether a T-shirt’s cotton is likely from Xinjiang.

Implementation of the law has received mixed reviews, in part because Congress gave CBP a difficult task by demanding the screening of all imports from China, a top supplier of goods to the U.S.

“It was really disappointing, the light touch, or barely any touch, that [the Biden administration] had in enforcement,” said Nazak Nikakhtar, a partner at the law firm Wiley Rein who served as an assistant Treasury secretary in the first Trump administration. “What’s the point of having laws if you’re not going to enforce?”

Though the UFLPA effectively bans all goods with links to Xinjiang, a government document known as the entity list helps both CBP and industry identify companies with known ties to forced labor. The list blocks imports from named companies, but some in U.S. industry have complained Chinese competitors with links to forced labor can circumvent the ban using affiliated companies that haven’t been designated.

Companies can also route goods with ties to Xinjiang through third countries to obfuscate their origins, complicating the work of CBP officials and corporate supply-chain experts. After the UFLPA came into force, cotton products meant for U.S. consumption began to be routed through Vietnam, said Ram Ben Tzion, chief executive of Publican, a provider of tools to look for fraudulent shipments.

CBP also must contend with millions of packages using the so-called de minimis exemption, or those declared to be worth $800 or less, that arrive each day and are subject to less screening. Trump took action to close that import channel but later backed down.

Now what?

CBP will likely increase UFLPA enforcement under Trump, and critical minerals and chemicals are likely its new priorities, said Kit Conklin, global head of risk and compliance with supply-chain vetting company Exiger and a former adviser to the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

“What I would expect with the Trump administration is significant new resources for CBP to enforce all of their laws, whether it’s immigration or the UFLPA,” Conklin said. “When CBP gets those resources, there will be an immediate impact on industries that have not yet been targeted.”

Trump at first glance would seem inclined to push enforcement, despite his general aversion to regulation that increases the compliance workload for U.S. businesses. In his first term, he took a number of steps against China, including raising trade pressure. It was under Trump the U.S. first labeled Chinese treatment of Uyghurs a genocide. The Biden administration stood by the assessment.

While a U.S. senator for Florida, Rubio sponsored the UFLPA, and he is a well-known China hawk.

But Musk, Trump’s frequently seen right-hand man, has business ties to China through his auto company Tesla. It sources batteries from battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology, also known as CATL. Some lawmakers have said CATL should be added to the UFLPA entity list.

There are “serious questions” about Musk’s potential conflicts of interests and “risks they pose to our security,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, (D., Ill.), the ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said in a statement Friday. Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Tesla recently wrote the administration warning the tariff war could make its cars more expensive.

Trump also recently appointed to the State Department Darren Beattie to serve as an acting undersecretary, despite complaints from some congressional Democrats that Beattie had in social-media posts appeared to blame Uyghurs for their oppression. The State Department, asked for comment, didn’t address the controversy but said it would “continue to champion the human rights” of Uyghurs and other groups facing genocide in China.

Trump’s cuts to the civil service and federal programs such as USAID could also imperil UFLPA enforcement. Cuts have hit Uyghur research and advocacy groups that provide research to help the government identify forced labor, said Laura Murphy, a forced-labor researcher and policy adviser during Biden’s administration.

“All of that stuff looks expendable to some people in the government today, [but cutting] it has extraordinary knock-on effects and real security risks,” Murphy said.

Write to Richard Vanderford at Richard.Vanderford@wsj.com