• CBP issues its first WRO in 17 months on Shanghai Select Safety Products Co., Ltd.
• As a result of the WRO, CBP personnel at U.S. ports of entry will detain work gloves manufactured by the Chinese entity and two affiliates.

On April 10, 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) issued a Withhold Release Order (“WRO”) on a Chinese company, Shanghai Select Safety Products Co., Ltd. (“Shanghai Select”) and its two subsidiaries, Select (Nantong ) Safety Products Co. Ltd. and Select Protective Technology (HK) Ltd. The WRO applies to work gloves that are manufactured by Shanghai Select and its subsidiaries.

WROs are a key part of CBP’s efforts to enforce 19 U.S.C. § 1307, which prohibits the importation of merchandise mined, produced or manufactured, wholly or in part, by forced labor, including prison labor. CBP issues a WRO when the agency has “reasonable evidence of the use of forced labor in the manufacturing or production of the good or goods” at issue. This WRO is the first to be issued in over 17 months and, according to CBP, is based on information that reasonably indicates the use of forced labor in the production of the work gloves at issue, in violation of 19 U.S.C. § 1307. However, CBP’s press release announcing the WRO did not specify which of the International Labor Organization’s indicators of forced labor it found Shanghai Select to have breached. As a result of the WRO, CBP personnel will detain work gloves manufactured by Shanghai Select and its subsidiaries at U.S. ports of entry.

Additionally, the WRO is the first to target a Chinese entity since the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (“UFLPA”) went into effect on June 21, 2022. Under the UFLPA, all goods produced in whole or in part in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (“XUAR”), or by an entity on the UFLPA Entity List, are presumed to be made with forced labor and prohibited from entry into the United States. It remains unclear as to whether Shanghai Select’s work gloves are connected to the XUAR, therefore implicating the UFLPA as well.

Regardless of its relation to the UFLPA, this WRO is just one of many actions taken by CBP against Chinese manufacturers suspected of using forced labor in their manufacturing and production chains. In a previous alert published earlier this year, we discussed a potential CBP enforcement action involving thousands of Volkswagen Group’s vehicles at a U.S. port of entry for suspected use of forced labor in the production of a vehicle component originating from the XUAR, in potential violation of the UFLPA and 19 U.S.C. § 1307. A complete list of all active CBP WROs and findings related to forced labor is available here.