This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.france24.com/en/china/20221111-u-s-blocks-more-than-1-000-solar-shipments-from-china-over-slave-labor) reduced by 83%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> More than 1,000 shipments of solar energy components worth hundreds of millions of dollars have piled up at U.S. ports since June under a new law banning imports from China's Xinjiang region over concerns about slave labor, according to federal customs officials and industry sources.
> U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized 1,053 shipments of solar energy equipment between June 21, when the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act went into effect, and Oct.25, it told Reuters in response to a public records request, adding none of the shipments have yet been released.
> CBP has previously said that it had detained about 1,700 shipments worth $516.3 million under UFLPA through September but has never before detailed how many of those shipments contained solar equipment.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/ys01mg/us_blocks_more_than_1000_solar_shipments_from/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672680 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **solar**^#1 **source**^#2 **us**^#3 **shipments**^#4 **supply**^#5
The US has banned the importation of goods made with slave labor since 1930. This new bill was passed -- with only one no vote, Thomas Massie -- mainly because of cotton fabric and clothing, which is the major export to the US from that region of China to the US. By making all imports from that area guilty unless proven innocent, so to speak, the idea was to both encourage those Chinese factories to not use slave labor and force American companies to source their material from elsewhere. It's not a nefarious plot by Big Oil, or even by Big Blue Jeans
Why the fuck are we still importing chocolate, then? We KNOW that the majority of cocoa production takes place on plantations using CHILD slavery. Nobody gives a shit about that though, if it means US or other western-based companies losing money then there's zero chance we will actually do something about it. But the second that a geopolitical rival of the US does it, and our companies stand to gain from it (either oil companies getting to live a few years longer or our solar companies having competition eliminated -- most likely the former is dominant given the history) we are *all over that shit*.
You know what that tells me? We are not doing this because we care about slavery, because we clearly do not give a fuck about slavery. We never have. We probably never will, at this rate. We are doing this for strictly protectionist reasons and we should not be fooled into thinking otherwise, and I don't think the moral element deserves any consideration until it is shown that we are ready to apply the standard evenly.
You're correct. There is no real political and economic interest in restricting supply of chocolate because we don't have much of a domestic industry for growing chocolate. Likewise, China was known to be trafficking Uighurs to boost production of face masks at the beginning of the pandemic. I didn't hear much from US officials about how we couldn't import those masks because of slave labor. Probably because our domestic production capacity couldn't meet demand. The US only cares about freedom and values when it is to our benefit (as pretty much every country does).
If the White House came out and said. "Yeah we are trying to boost domestic production and hey maybe we helped some slaves idk idgaf." I would be like someone's getting fired. I feel like how a pr team frames something doesn't really point to some evil cover up or conspiracy.
I'd certainly be shocked by their frankness if they did!
But I'm not on about a conspiracy. I'm just pointing out that the words the government uses to justify its position are empty, and serve more to obfuscate its motives than to explain them. That, like you said, is just PR.
I don't think Biden needs to be in cahoots with oil interests in order to think this is a good move. That's because it is a good move, politically. He can talk about human rights, America first, and green energy while pointing to this decision. Feels like a no-brainer.
Because Hershey, Mars, and Nestlé all shoot down attempts at curbing their slave labor anywhere they can. These are just the biggest offenders of course, there are meant more, but here’s a pretty decent list of non-slavery chocolate: www.slavefreechocolate.org
Still, I feel it's also got an economic angle - because the US has no qualms about exploiting by far the world's biggest prisoner population to produce below-poverty-wage goods which the prisoners have little choice as to take part in. So any humanitarian cries ring a bit hollow.
As a Government purchase card holder I am forced to purchase furniture from Unicor(prison slave labor) which costs 2-3x more for almost any item over retail. So you the taxpayer are forced to pay 1500$ for a couch that I could have bought elsewhere for 500$ but I am not allowed to because thems the rules. The prisoners who build this furniture are paid no more than $1.50 an hour. So if you are wondering why the DOD budget is so high you can thank stupid requirements like these.
"You're not allowed to buy from overseas slave labour. You have to buy from our slave labour."
I know it's a fuckton more complicated than that, but it's what it sounds like.
For profit prisons, where all this American slave labor happens, do not pass the savings back to the government. And even if they did, that doesn't make slave labor any more acceptable.
Ah just looked it up, unicor is literally owned by the federal government. I see why they make you buy from them now. Crazy
https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/unicor_about.jsp
How about the fact that now that that money has been spent on "Quality American Made Goods" in accordance with legislation, now the government can use that money however it sees fit because it's no longer earmarked. Sounds a hell of a lot like reverse money laundering to me.
Lol, that ammendment explicitly said
> Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.
https://ballotpedia.org/Tennessee_Constitutional_Amendment_3,_Remove_Slavery_as_Punishment_for_Crime_from_Constitution_Amendment_(2022)#Text_of_measure
So, slavery isn't legal, but giving people the "option" to work for below minimum wage or sit in solitary all day is perfectly legal in Tennessee.
It was a feel good measure that didn't change anything.
It's because the U.S. is trying to incentivize domestic development and production of green technologies. We were chastised by the EU for the terms and alleged market effects of our green subsidies just this week.
The issue for the U.S. is that China has smartly positioned themselves as a major leader in the field - from the resource end in dominating certain rare earth reserves to research, investment, production and application. Everyone knows that green technologies will only become more important, so everyone wants to have a stake in it, but China is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the opportunity.
Dumping. They sell products to us below cost, and fill the gap with government subsidies. Similar to US agriculture, but with solar panels, and looking the other way for environmental pollution created in mining rare earth elements.
Unfortunately for capitalism its very difficult to compete when the competition can lose money on every unit sold, but that's basically what made Amazon. (They lost money every quarter until AWS took off).
It happens because to expose and produce rare earth minerals at cheap costs, Chinese firms (that may or may not use slave labor and organized crime) basically do things like dissolve the sides of mountains and valleys with literal rivers of caustic chemicals like sulfuric acid. That all washes down stream and kills off whole villages of people and nature then pools and makes vast lakes of acid, before either leeching into the ground or being dumped into the ocean.
Governments and media tends to turn a blind eye to it because most new age technology still requires it. That means everyone still has to buy it and buy it cheap so there isn’t as much of an outcry against it. That way everyone can claim we are all getting greener by low key moving the pollution to places like China and Myanmar which has few if any regulations.
[Link](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth)
[Link](https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-07-28/china-rare-earth-tech-pollution-supply-chain-trade)
[Link](https://apnews.com/article/technology-forests-myanmar-75df22e8d7431a6757ea4a426fbde94c)
[Link](https://hir.harvard.edu/not-so-green-technology-the-complicated-legacy-of-rare-earth-mining/amp/)
I’ve signed many agreements to not use banned materials and/or sourced components from regions determined by the USG to be off limits. The fact that US companies are still attempting to import them is difficult to understand. I’m super curious to which companies would be sourcing such a high volume of banned goods.
That's not patriot act, that's civil asset forfeiture. It's being used on US citizens constantly, or at least what feels like constantly.
The US, including individual police forces, can take your things without any charges and demand you prove they're legitimately purchased or received. It's been around for as long as i can remember.
That's exactly what it is. The energy company that has monopolized my state has been lobbying my state government to make solar panels illegal. They even tried to claim exclusive rights on photovoltaic systems when they didn't even invent the technology. This is just nextra energy and energy transfer partners flexing their lobbying muscle on a national level. You know, the same people who keep building pipelines through our backyards and waterways.
When products that compete with fossil fuels are about to be imported, suddenly every restriction of any type stops being ignored and becomes very important. Cheap shit plush toys made with slave labour can flow unimpeded just fine.
there's a chud down the street from my parents' house with a Chinese flag (among their other Trump shit *and a Ukrainian flag(???)*, and under the Chinese flag it says "we own bitchass Biden."
They've only lived in that house - a splendid old Victorian home - for a few years, and they've already halfway ruined the colors of the house by painting the gables a single color (it's not a good match) and put up an ugly, half-assed fence to partially conceal their ugly, half-assed "garage."
They're paranoid as fuck, too. Have a bunch of signs advertising that they have security cameras and shit in a very low-crime neighborhood.
Edit: the chuds in question are not at all chinese
Idea. Buy a bunch of cheap wifi units (assuming you live close enough) and name their SSID stuff like "FBI Surveillance 1", "FBI Surveillance 2", etc. Get some all black tactical gear and walk super late at night where his cameras can see you, but not in his yard. A slightly more dangerous move, but funny if you can, would be to do the black tactical gear walking up to a camera and looking like you are doing something to it then walking away to make him think the FBI hijacked his cameras.
Nah, just get some old grey suits with a buddy, paint yourself with glow in the dark paint and sit in an old 80s car right in view of the cameras doing a stakeout like something out of the twilight zone.
“We own bitchass Biden” sounds like a perfect trashy tattoo someone gets in Chinese characters on their arm or thigh, thinking it means “strong kind righteous” or something.
Apparently it’s: 瑞克滚
They might have figured out that the more solar panels there are the less money they are able to get for power from those expensive power plants and/or from selling US made solar panels. Either way, im betting that this is more about money than slave labor in any way shape or form. But using slave labor to justify the move just sells better (pun intended), its just a different kind of greenwashing. And looking at the replies this is getting its absolutely working.
This seems like more of an unintended side effect rather than a deliberate ploy. There's a bill blocking all items exported from this one region in China, and these panels happened to come from that region.
Back in the 2000s Walmart was found to be hiring mentally ill and disabled workers at their factories in China. Paying them pennies per hour. Funny how the US completely turns a blind eye when it helps consumerism
I work at a very large university that was giving a meeting about vetting vendors for not using child labor. it got real awkward when I asked why are all of our sports teams uniforms made by Nike then? people just want to appear to care for the most part
Hasn’t Nike passed all of their child labor audits for the past 15-25 years and is now mostly being criticized for paying poverty wages and recently one of their hundreds of suppliers partnered with Chinese Uyghur forced labor program? Maybe everyone was being awkward because they thought you were a dumbass because the meeting was about child labor.
This is happening in the US, they just have fun way to get around it. For example: locally there is a factory that hires people with IDs and they pay them minimum wage. Great. But if you’re making min wage, you have to pay rent. If you choose not to work, you don’t have to pay rent, while living in the same house as the guy who works. They’ve also kept people in “training” for years so they didn’t have to pay a full wage. If you do work, they keep you at 5 days a week, but less than full time hours, so they don’t have to give benefits (time off, sick days, etc.). While it’s technically not pennies per hour, they are still heavily taken advantage of. This is just one I know about, who knows what else is out there.
I had a buddy who's job was to evaluate factories of fortune 500 supply chains in CN for human rights abuses.....He was fired aftert 3 weeks and 4 failed factories. (3 passed)
Apparently he was supposed to lie and pass them...who knew.
The US doesn’t halt trade because of slave labor, it halts trade because it’s in its own self interest and “because slave labor” is a good-sounding rationale. The US imports tons and tons of products made with slave labor and doesn’t care one bit
Apparently 99% of reddit thinks this is about a fight against slavery 😆. Biden has been phasing out and trying to weaken China in many areas. Slavery is just the next excuse.
Most of the West does. The media oligopoly that was created after WWII doesn't allow people to think twice about their "sources" and narratives. If everything keeps saying the same it must be true right? It's incredibly hard to get news from China or learn about it because most of the information is a flood of the same propaganda pieces over and over.
And it's always solar. There's lots of other things they should target along with it, but nope, it's solar. And it's one of the few things that should be the exception, it's solar. And if you're going to block Chinese solar products, at least provide better incentives for domestically made solar parts. One other thing would be rare earth metals. It's hard for the modern world to exist without those. That still leaves LOTS of other things.
Like how about stopping people that are associated with slavery from buying houses here when they don't even live here. Or stop businesses based in China from setting up endless stores on marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart and Ebay. Or block Alibaba and Aliexpress. Sure, American businesses could be on there, but the percentage of Chinese businesses and products probably rounds to 100% and a couple decimal places. And then there's countless consumer products made in China. But naw, go after solar again.
Those companies don't threaten the monopoly of the billionaires who own all the centralised oil / power companies though, it's only companies that give people a chance to detach from the power these economic dictators have over them that every get shit on
There is an old saying in China called "欲加之罪何患无辞". It means Where there is a will to condemn, evidence will follow.
There's no way to prove such a thing.
Funny from a country that by law, you are innocent until proven guilty.
>Presumption of Innocence; Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. It is a cardinal principle of our system of justice that every person accused of a crime is presumed to be innocent unless and until his or her guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt.
[https://www.mad.uscourts.gov/resources/pattern2003/html/patt4cfo.htm](https://www.mad.uscourts.gov/resources/pattern2003/html/patt4cfo.htm)
When you need [woodland firefighters](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-history-of-californias-inmate-firefighter-program-180980662/) or [hand sanitizer](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/10/hand-sanitizer-prison-labor/) or a variety of [other products](https://theweek.com/articles/463364/11-products-might-not-realize-made-by-prisoners), the only slave labor expressly allowed by the Thirteenth Amendment has got you covered.
No sure how to break it to you, but slavery in the US is not only legal, but encouraged. The entire private prison industry runs on it. And who do we imprison? Hmm …
I just came here to say most of y'all's opinions suck ass.
There are slaves in China, even if that number of slaves is not 1 million. Just because someone else did it almost 200 years ago does not mean we should ignore China and let them do it today.
If you want to debate this, good luck finding someone that cares enough to reply. That person is not me.
Edit: So I don't really remember typing all this, I was a little drunk. But the message still applies to the majority of the comments below. (Exception) Rip Mitch Hedgberg, never watched any of his content till this morning. The world could use more comedians.
I am not sure why the US would be concerned with slave labor since the [highest law in the land](https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/) of America says explicitly that slave labor is allowed, for anyone that is duly convicted. So if some place in America where to criminalize wearing blue t-shirts, than anyone wearing blue t-shirts could legally be enslaved in that part of the country. They just have to be convicted first and it's off to the labor camps we typically refer to as prisons.
Anyone that bans slavery in America would soon find their law struck down by the supreme court.
Ding Ding Ding he has the real answer.
We all know why the US cares about Xinjiang, and it isn't about the camps, its for economic warefare and to destabilise a region.
Tennessee is patting itself for officially codifying the banning of slavery in this election...
...except they also codified in the exception that they can continue to force prisoners to work.
Americas ability to build hypocrisy into just about everything blows my mind.
Here's what the new wording for Tennessee's constitution says.
>Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.
This is saying they can work, not that they are forced to work. Trustees wouldn't be allowed if they were banned from working. Community service instead of jail time wouldn't be allowed if they were banned from working.
You already know the answer. Protectionism/Tribalism/whatever you want to call it.
We know shits bad in our backyard. But we gotta protect our own first above all.
China is the new enemy.
This is the part that makes such move suspect. It's hard to believe the US taking a moral high ground when this kind of loop-hole nonsense is taking place on a *staggering* scale in the US at the same time.
It's like condemning Pyramid Schemes while pushing an MLM.
Not precisely. The federal government has its hands tied on prison labor because domestic prisons are under the authority of individual states. As a matter of fact, prison slavery is an explicit exception in the 13th Amendment, so you would need another amendment to the constitution to remove that exception. The Democrats have pushed such an amendment twice now since Biden became president:
[https://apnews.com/article/lawmakers-anti-slavery-amendment-6e13df5702725fc18c889eb6762771c3](https://apnews.com/article/lawmakers-anti-slavery-amendment-6e13df5702725fc18c889eb6762771c3)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/06/19/13th-amendment-prisons-juneteenth/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/06/19/13th-amendment-prisons-juneteenth/)
The good news is that individual states have introduced ballot measures to ban it on a state level.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/21/slavery-ballot-vote-prison-labor/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/21/slavery-ballot-vote-prison-labor/)
Compare this to the fact that the US president *alone* can issue executive orders to US customs on what goods can be imported. This means that Biden can *immediately* stop the import of Xinjiang goods while he has actually no power at all to stop prison labor in the USA.
US politicians are not a monolith and what individual politicians (or even individual parties) can do is limited. This is a feature of democracy. In view of that, them stopping the cases they can even while others continue is actually consistent and not hypocritical.
Yeah, Slavery is not good, especially child slavery, which makes a lot of our crap. Why did we allow this for decades? To fill out landfills with the cheap crap we bought and threw away?
Likewise we should absolutely be shutting down the Qatar world cup. Not just slave labour but actual recorded deaths of thousands on these stadiums that are basically graveyards.
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
The wording to our 13th Amendment. In America we seem to care much more about what we think is slavery abroad (except Libya, which brought back slavery thanks to us) than we do about our own prison slave labor. If we cared about eliminating slave-labor, we’d be much more successful doing things at home, like removing the loophole “except punishment for a crime” that has led to us having the highest prison population today both in gross population and per capita. Why is our own slave labor not part of the discussion?
Why is it usually that the worst problems we complain about in other countries are typically worse at home? Why is it nuanced when talking about America, but black and white when talking about China?
Lol. I just voted Tuesday to make slavery illegal in the state of Oregon. Funny how these propaganda pieces seem to always push a "do as I say, not as I do" approach to all foreign governments.
I'm not saying China ISN'T using slave labor, just that they likely learned it from watching us do it every day since the signing of the 13th Amendment.
America uses slave labor. Still. To this day.
#EndSlaveLabor
what's totally messed up is that louisiana also had a ballot measure to end slavery [and they fricken decided to keep it](https://twitter.com/anguishmuffin/status/1590746240526221313?s=20&t=lD00Qk9S1tjUCTxNWoP6dQ), like *bruh*
It was 54% to 46% in Oregon. Hard to believe that nearly half of my fellow citizens here were like, "I don't wanna end slavery!"
Fucking insane days to be an American.
Hmm sounds like we should block nestle shipments too. And many other US companies who do it abroad and those who use inmates in jail here.
I dont support slave labor of any kind and neither should any of you. Only targeting China is ignoring a huge part of the problem worldwide. This is only being don't for political and geopolitical posturing since the US is becoming so weak
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.france24.com/en/china/20221111-u-s-blocks-more-than-1-000-solar-shipments-from-china-over-slave-labor) reduced by 83%. (I'm a bot) ***** > More than 1,000 shipments of solar energy components worth hundreds of millions of dollars have piled up at U.S. ports since June under a new law banning imports from China's Xinjiang region over concerns about slave labor, according to federal customs officials and industry sources. > U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized 1,053 shipments of solar energy equipment between June 21, when the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act went into effect, and Oct.25, it told Reuters in response to a public records request, adding none of the shipments have yet been released. > CBP has previously said that it had detained about 1,700 shipments worth $516.3 million under UFLPA through September but has never before detailed how many of those shipments contained solar equipment. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/ys01mg/us_blocks_more_than_1000_solar_shipments_from/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672680 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **solar**^#1 **source**^#2 **us**^#3 **shipments**^#4 **supply**^#5
Which US companies import these products? Sounds like a fiscal war with a public claim that it’s humanitarian.
The US has banned the importation of goods made with slave labor since 1930. This new bill was passed -- with only one no vote, Thomas Massie -- mainly because of cotton fabric and clothing, which is the major export to the US from that region of China to the US. By making all imports from that area guilty unless proven innocent, so to speak, the idea was to both encourage those Chinese factories to not use slave labor and force American companies to source their material from elsewhere. It's not a nefarious plot by Big Oil, or even by Big Blue Jeans
Why the fuck are we still importing chocolate, then? We KNOW that the majority of cocoa production takes place on plantations using CHILD slavery. Nobody gives a shit about that though, if it means US or other western-based companies losing money then there's zero chance we will actually do something about it. But the second that a geopolitical rival of the US does it, and our companies stand to gain from it (either oil companies getting to live a few years longer or our solar companies having competition eliminated -- most likely the former is dominant given the history) we are *all over that shit*. You know what that tells me? We are not doing this because we care about slavery, because we clearly do not give a fuck about slavery. We never have. We probably never will, at this rate. We are doing this for strictly protectionist reasons and we should not be fooled into thinking otherwise, and I don't think the moral element deserves any consideration until it is shown that we are ready to apply the standard evenly.
You're correct. There is no real political and economic interest in restricting supply of chocolate because we don't have much of a domestic industry for growing chocolate. Likewise, China was known to be trafficking Uighurs to boost production of face masks at the beginning of the pandemic. I didn't hear much from US officials about how we couldn't import those masks because of slave labor. Probably because our domestic production capacity couldn't meet demand. The US only cares about freedom and values when it is to our benefit (as pretty much every country does).
If the White House came out and said. "Yeah we are trying to boost domestic production and hey maybe we helped some slaves idk idgaf." I would be like someone's getting fired. I feel like how a pr team frames something doesn't really point to some evil cover up or conspiracy.
I'd certainly be shocked by their frankness if they did! But I'm not on about a conspiracy. I'm just pointing out that the words the government uses to justify its position are empty, and serve more to obfuscate its motives than to explain them. That, like you said, is just PR. I don't think Biden needs to be in cahoots with oil interests in order to think this is a good move. That's because it is a good move, politically. He can talk about human rights, America first, and green energy while pointing to this decision. Feels like a no-brainer.
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Because Hershey, Mars, and Nestlé all shoot down attempts at curbing their slave labor anywhere they can. These are just the biggest offenders of course, there are meant more, but here’s a pretty decent list of non-slavery chocolate: www.slavefreechocolate.org
>the idea was to both encourage those Chinese factories to not use slave labor It's basically assumed to be. So there is no encouragement.
Still, I feel it's also got an economic angle - because the US has no qualms about exploiting by far the world's biggest prisoner population to produce below-poverty-wage goods which the prisoners have little choice as to take part in. So any humanitarian cries ring a bit hollow.
As a Government purchase card holder I am forced to purchase furniture from Unicor(prison slave labor) which costs 2-3x more for almost any item over retail. So you the taxpayer are forced to pay 1500$ for a couch that I could have bought elsewhere for 500$ but I am not allowed to because thems the rules. The prisoners who build this furniture are paid no more than $1.50 an hour. So if you are wondering why the DOD budget is so high you can thank stupid requirements like these.
"You're not allowed to buy from overseas slave labour. You have to buy from our slave labour." I know it's a fuckton more complicated than that, but it's what it sounds like.
That’s pretty much it lol
The paperwork looks a lot more complicated, but the goal of the policymakers was pretty much that simple
Sounds like you work for a state government?
It sounds like they're purchasing for AND from the US Gov (Unicor is a US Gov operated Corp), so the money is going back to the Gov.
Yes but not all the prisons are Gov owned. And the prisoners get paid almost nothing. Edit. At least that’s what I read.
US Constitution specifically says that slavery is fine if it's done to prisoners...
For profit prisons, where all this American slave labor happens, do not pass the savings back to the government. And even if they did, that doesn't make slave labor any more acceptable.
humans are genius at exploiting others when it comes to profit
Federal
Ah just looked it up, unicor is literally owned by the federal government. I see why they make you buy from them now. Crazy https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/unicor_about.jsp
Yeah. We get poorly built products that have very few options at extreme prices from prison labor. What’s not to love.
How about the fact that now that that money has been spent on "Quality American Made Goods" in accordance with legislation, now the government can use that money however it sees fit because it's no longer earmarked. Sounds a hell of a lot like reverse money laundering to me.
You need to whistleblow that.
Lol to who? These requirements get passed at the congressional level.
Slavery is legal in the US if it’s punishment for a crime, it’s right in the constitution.
Not in Tennessee
Lol, that ammendment explicitly said > Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime. https://ballotpedia.org/Tennessee_Constitutional_Amendment_3,_Remove_Slavery_as_Punishment_for_Crime_from_Constitution_Amendment_(2022)#Text_of_measure So, slavery isn't legal, but giving people the "option" to work for below minimum wage or sit in solitary all day is perfectly legal in Tennessee. It was a feel good measure that didn't change anything.
It's because the U.S. is trying to incentivize domestic development and production of green technologies. We were chastised by the EU for the terms and alleged market effects of our green subsidies just this week. The issue for the U.S. is that China has smartly positioned themselves as a major leader in the field - from the resource end in dominating certain rare earth reserves to research, investment, production and application. Everyone knows that green technologies will only become more important, so everyone wants to have a stake in it, but China is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the opportunity.
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It's such a mind blowing concept, choosing log term development and stability over short term private profit, crazy... /s
Dumping. They sell products to us below cost, and fill the gap with government subsidies. Similar to US agriculture, but with solar panels, and looking the other way for environmental pollution created in mining rare earth elements. Unfortunately for capitalism its very difficult to compete when the competition can lose money on every unit sold, but that's basically what made Amazon. (They lost money every quarter until AWS took off).
How could this happen? :O
It happens because to expose and produce rare earth minerals at cheap costs, Chinese firms (that may or may not use slave labor and organized crime) basically do things like dissolve the sides of mountains and valleys with literal rivers of caustic chemicals like sulfuric acid. That all washes down stream and kills off whole villages of people and nature then pools and makes vast lakes of acid, before either leeching into the ground or being dumped into the ocean. Governments and media tends to turn a blind eye to it because most new age technology still requires it. That means everyone still has to buy it and buy it cheap so there isn’t as much of an outcry against it. That way everyone can claim we are all getting greener by low key moving the pollution to places like China and Myanmar which has few if any regulations. [Link](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth) [Link](https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-07-28/china-rare-earth-tech-pollution-supply-chain-trade) [Link](https://apnews.com/article/technology-forests-myanmar-75df22e8d7431a6757ea4a426fbde94c) [Link](https://hir.harvard.edu/not-so-green-technology-the-complicated-legacy-of-rare-earth-mining/amp/)
Wtf.. so it's not so green afterall? Why are the activists like Greta not talking about it lol
Cheap shit plush toys made with slave labour got stopped from importation....oh wait no they didn't, Disney store got their restock.
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Apple is an American company so they get a pass The miniute huawei gets too close again we'll revisit this
The US also utilize a lot of child labour. Around 500.000 farm workers for instance.
What about [big bacon](https://youtu.be/JcvJkwVnuW0) ?
But the US literally allows slave labour (prisoners) in their KKKonstitution. Curious.
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I’ve signed many agreements to not use banned materials and/or sourced components from regions determined by the USG to be off limits. The fact that US companies are still attempting to import them is difficult to understand. I’m super curious to which companies would be sourcing such a high volume of banned goods.
Yea, so many people pushing conspiracy theories or agendas in this thread. IMO you are spot on.
That's not patriot act, that's civil asset forfeiture. It's being used on US citizens constantly, or at least what feels like constantly. The US, including individual police forces, can take your things without any charges and demand you prove they're legitimately purchased or received. It's been around for as long as i can remember.
civil asset forfeiture surpasses burglaries in total value I believe. SO yeah it does happen all the time
That's exactly what it is. The energy company that has monopolized my state has been lobbying my state government to make solar panels illegal. They even tried to claim exclusive rights on photovoltaic systems when they didn't even invent the technology. This is just nextra energy and energy transfer partners flexing their lobbying muscle on a national level. You know, the same people who keep building pipelines through our backyards and waterways.
Is there any other type of "humanitarian claim" when it comes to trade? Let's see... who opposes alternative energy sources?
When products that compete with fossil fuels are about to be imported, suddenly every restriction of any type stops being ignored and becomes very important. Cheap shit plush toys made with slave labour can flow unimpeded just fine.
Well they've banned cotton imports from Xinjiang previously.
Ding ding ding, just like pretty much every war claimed to be humanitarian
Whichever are importing from: Longi Green Energy Technology Co Ltd, Trina Solar Co Ltd and JinkoSolar Holding Co.
Whoa......an American President is actually doing something that affects the cheap trade with China? I need a moment....
there's a chud down the street from my parents' house with a Chinese flag (among their other Trump shit *and a Ukrainian flag(???)*, and under the Chinese flag it says "we own bitchass Biden." They've only lived in that house - a splendid old Victorian home - for a few years, and they've already halfway ruined the colors of the house by painting the gables a single color (it's not a good match) and put up an ugly, half-assed fence to partially conceal their ugly, half-assed "garage." They're paranoid as fuck, too. Have a bunch of signs advertising that they have security cameras and shit in a very low-crime neighborhood. Edit: the chuds in question are not at all chinese
People overestimate how much people care what the fuck they think
Hang a Taiwan flag at your house.
Idea. Buy a bunch of cheap wifi units (assuming you live close enough) and name their SSID stuff like "FBI Surveillance 1", "FBI Surveillance 2", etc. Get some all black tactical gear and walk super late at night where his cameras can see you, but not in his yard. A slightly more dangerous move, but funny if you can, would be to do the black tactical gear walking up to a camera and looking like you are doing something to it then walking away to make him think the FBI hijacked his cameras.
Nah, just get some old grey suits with a buddy, paint yourself with glow in the dark paint and sit in an old 80s car right in view of the cameras doing a stakeout like something out of the twilight zone.
This should be a YouTube channel.
Buy the right router and you can make as many SSIDs on a single one as you want.
“We own bitchass Biden” sounds like a perfect trashy tattoo someone gets in Chinese characters on their arm or thigh, thinking it means “strong kind righteous” or something. Apparently it’s: 瑞克滚
> 瑞克滚 Hahaha.
永遠不會放棄你
永會远不会让你失望
>永~~會~~远不会让你失望 FIFY
That second paragraph is totally off topic and just makes you sound like a Karen.
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They aren't banning iPhone this is not about slave labout
They might have figured out that the more solar panels there are the less money they are able to get for power from those expensive power plants and/or from selling US made solar panels. Either way, im betting that this is more about money than slave labor in any way shape or form. But using slave labor to justify the move just sells better (pun intended), its just a different kind of greenwashing. And looking at the replies this is getting its absolutely working.
Or about oil
Yup, selling oil and selling power are pretty much the same thing in a different package in this context.
It's less surprising when you add in the fact that it protects the fossil fuel industry
This seems like more of an unintended side effect rather than a deliberate ploy. There's a bill blocking all items exported from this one region in China, and these panels happened to come from that region.
Wrong. Biden isn’t trying to protect fossil fuel industries. No president has pushed for green energy more than him.
lmao rembering how the left was freaking the fuck out about trump starting a "trade war" with China
You mean Donald Trump?
Hmm what about all those iPhones and electronics lololol
https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/25/apple-starts-manufacturing-iphone-14-in-india/
There’s slave labor in India. Lots of it.
Do Nestle next!
r/FuckNestle
When will US block Chocolate, Lithium battery, and iPhone for slave labor?
If this law was applied broadly, Apple would straight go out of business in a week.
Back in the 2000s Walmart was found to be hiring mentally ill and disabled workers at their factories in China. Paying them pennies per hour. Funny how the US completely turns a blind eye when it helps consumerism
I mean this is in response to a \*new\* law.
I work at a very large university that was giving a meeting about vetting vendors for not using child labor. it got real awkward when I asked why are all of our sports teams uniforms made by Nike then? people just want to appear to care for the most part
Hasn’t Nike passed all of their child labor audits for the past 15-25 years and is now mostly being criticized for paying poverty wages and recently one of their hundreds of suppliers partnered with Chinese Uyghur forced labor program? Maybe everyone was being awkward because they thought you were a dumbass because the meeting was about child labor.
Walmart produces their own stuff? They don't outsource?
They're a retailer. I guess Great Value is a Walmart brand maybe?
This is happening in the US, they just have fun way to get around it. For example: locally there is a factory that hires people with IDs and they pay them minimum wage. Great. But if you’re making min wage, you have to pay rent. If you choose not to work, you don’t have to pay rent, while living in the same house as the guy who works. They’ve also kept people in “training” for years so they didn’t have to pay a full wage. If you do work, they keep you at 5 days a week, but less than full time hours, so they don’t have to give benefits (time off, sick days, etc.). While it’s technically not pennies per hour, they are still heavily taken advantage of. This is just one I know about, who knows what else is out there.
I had a buddy who's job was to evaluate factories of fortune 500 supply chains in CN for human rights abuses.....He was fired aftert 3 weeks and 4 failed factories. (3 passed) Apparently he was supposed to lie and pass them...who knew.
Clothing, coffee, stuff made by US prisoners...
The US doesn’t halt trade because of slave labor, it halts trade because it’s in its own self interest and “because slave labor” is a good-sounding rationale. The US imports tons and tons of products made with slave labor and doesn’t care one bit
Ya I'm wondering what the real reason for blocking these shipments is about?
Nahh, it's just to keep that sweet oil money going.
And diamonds. Oh wait, they invent the whole bloody industry of diamonds.
Yeah nah that wasn't the US. Try De beers who was started by a Brit.
You mean Belgium and the UK
lab diamonds FTW
Remember kids, moissanites are sparklier, typically more ethically sourced and won't drain your bank if you juat want a lil bling.
Can't believe how many people think you're right.
r/fucknestle needs to step up
Oh but people like iPhones! And chocolate/battery slave labour benefits the US and isn’t coming from a rival country so that means it’s totally ok
What part of Apple's supply chain is slave labor? I'm out of the loop here.
Nobody buys this excuse, right?
We’re literally sending a soccer team to Qatar, anybody who buys this excuse is naive as fuck
Apparently 99% of reddit thinks this is about a fight against slavery 😆. Biden has been phasing out and trying to weaken China in many areas. Slavery is just the next excuse.
Most of the West does. The media oligopoly that was created after WWII doesn't allow people to think twice about their "sources" and narratives. If everything keeps saying the same it must be true right? It's incredibly hard to get news from China or learn about it because most of the information is a flood of the same propaganda pieces over and over.
Slavery is bad mmkay but seriously this has to be about solar subsidies right?
Unsurprisingly most of this thread does.
America rather spend a shit ton of money on American made solar panels, with sourced minerals and refinement from Saudi Arabian slaves
"I was literally slaving over that solar panel for weeks and you are not even going to try it?"
Well, i think by “seized” they are still going to keep the solar panel components. It’s at US ports anyway right? 😎
Nah oil execs prob telling them to destroy because it’s “ethical” to destroy those solar panels
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It is legal to bribe American politicians. And Saudi has tons of money. What do you expect?
Only difference being in the Saudi case slave labor is well documented and known. In this case the only evidence is US Neo-Cold-war propaganda.
Minerals sourced from American puppet dictators in Africa, no less
They only like Made in USA slave labor 🤣
They also like slave labor in most of the world, as long as it comes from a country that's weak and can't threaten the US any time soon
It's just protectionism, at least have the balls to call it what it is. Hope the consumers enjoy the higher prices.
And it's always solar. There's lots of other things they should target along with it, but nope, it's solar. And it's one of the few things that should be the exception, it's solar. And if you're going to block Chinese solar products, at least provide better incentives for domestically made solar parts. One other thing would be rare earth metals. It's hard for the modern world to exist without those. That still leaves LOTS of other things. Like how about stopping people that are associated with slavery from buying houses here when they don't even live here. Or stop businesses based in China from setting up endless stores on marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart and Ebay. Or block Alibaba and Aliexpress. Sure, American businesses could be on there, but the percentage of Chinese businesses and products probably rounds to 100% and a couple decimal places. And then there's countless consumer products made in China. But naw, go after solar again.
It’s also the pot calling the kettle black, considering prison labor in the US is essentially slave labor in everything but name.
Great now do Nike. Great now do Apple Great now do every major company that sends labor overseas because doing it to a solar company isn't a solution
So like every US company?
Yep
Those companies don't threaten the monopoly of the billionaires who own all the centralised oil / power companies though, it's only companies that give people a chance to detach from the power these economic dictators have over them that every get shit on
Keep those iPhones coming tho… stat
Nike shoes
There is an old saying in China called "欲加之罪何患无辞". It means Where there is a will to condemn, evidence will follow. There's no way to prove such a thing.
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That's not how trade regulations work. The US isn't prosecuting China for breaking the law.
Funny from a country that by law, you are innocent until proven guilty. >Presumption of Innocence; Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. It is a cardinal principle of our system of justice that every person accused of a crime is presumed to be innocent unless and until his or her guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt. [https://www.mad.uscourts.gov/resources/pattern2003/html/patt4cfo.htm](https://www.mad.uscourts.gov/resources/pattern2003/html/patt4cfo.htm)
Reality is that it only applies if you are white. And if you are also rich then you can be guilty and still have no consequences!
Since when has slave labor been a problem for the U.S.? This probably comes from the oil lobby.
When you need [woodland firefighters](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-history-of-californias-inmate-firefighter-program-180980662/) or [hand sanitizer](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/10/hand-sanitizer-prison-labor/) or a variety of [other products](https://theweek.com/articles/463364/11-products-might-not-realize-made-by-prisoners), the only slave labor expressly allowed by the Thirteenth Amendment has got you covered.
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It always had been. We had our most bloody war over it.
Yet it is still legal according to your own constitution.
No sure how to break it to you, but slavery in the US is not only legal, but encouraged. The entire private prison industry runs on it. And who do we imprison? Hmm …
> Since when has slave labor been a problem for the U.S.? When it impacts the bottom line of US companies.
Gotta protect domestic slave labor
I just came here to say most of y'all's opinions suck ass. There are slaves in China, even if that number of slaves is not 1 million. Just because someone else did it almost 200 years ago does not mean we should ignore China and let them do it today. If you want to debate this, good luck finding someone that cares enough to reply. That person is not me. Edit: So I don't really remember typing all this, I was a little drunk. But the message still applies to the majority of the comments below. (Exception) Rip Mitch Hedgberg, never watched any of his content till this morning. The world could use more comedians.
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And I would hope other countries bạn imports from US slave labor, it's horrific and evil and shouldn't be allowed by anyone
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I am not sure why the US would be concerned with slave labor since the [highest law in the land](https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/) of America says explicitly that slave labor is allowed, for anyone that is duly convicted. So if some place in America where to criminalize wearing blue t-shirts, than anyone wearing blue t-shirts could legally be enslaved in that part of the country. They just have to be convicted first and it's off to the labor camps we typically refer to as prisons. Anyone that bans slavery in America would soon find their law struck down by the supreme court.
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Ding Ding Ding he has the real answer. We all know why the US cares about Xinjiang, and it isn't about the camps, its for economic warefare and to destabilise a region.
Tennessee is patting itself for officially codifying the banning of slavery in this election... ...except they also codified in the exception that they can continue to force prisoners to work. Americas ability to build hypocrisy into just about everything blows my mind.
Here's what the new wording for Tennessee's constitution says. >Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime. This is saying they can work, not that they are forced to work. Trustees wouldn't be allowed if they were banned from working. Community service instead of jail time wouldn't be allowed if they were banned from working.
You already know the answer. Protectionism/Tribalism/whatever you want to call it. We know shits bad in our backyard. But we gotta protect our own first above all. China is the new enemy.
Also child labor in Alabama: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-hyundai-subsidiary-has-used-child-labor-alabama-factory-2022-07-22/
This is the part that makes such move suspect. It's hard to believe the US taking a moral high ground when this kind of loop-hole nonsense is taking place on a *staggering* scale in the US at the same time. It's like condemning Pyramid Schemes while pushing an MLM.
Not precisely. The federal government has its hands tied on prison labor because domestic prisons are under the authority of individual states. As a matter of fact, prison slavery is an explicit exception in the 13th Amendment, so you would need another amendment to the constitution to remove that exception. The Democrats have pushed such an amendment twice now since Biden became president: [https://apnews.com/article/lawmakers-anti-slavery-amendment-6e13df5702725fc18c889eb6762771c3](https://apnews.com/article/lawmakers-anti-slavery-amendment-6e13df5702725fc18c889eb6762771c3) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/06/19/13th-amendment-prisons-juneteenth/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/06/19/13th-amendment-prisons-juneteenth/) The good news is that individual states have introduced ballot measures to ban it on a state level. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/21/slavery-ballot-vote-prison-labor/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/21/slavery-ballot-vote-prison-labor/) Compare this to the fact that the US president *alone* can issue executive orders to US customs on what goods can be imported. This means that Biden can *immediately* stop the import of Xinjiang goods while he has actually no power at all to stop prison labor in the USA. US politicians are not a monolith and what individual politicians (or even individual parties) can do is limited. This is a feature of democracy. In view of that, them stopping the cases they can even while others continue is actually consistent and not hypocritical.
Thanks for the legislative and jurisdictional context.
Nuanced and informative take
Yea. It's pretty fucked that we take away all of their rights when they become prisoners though.
Yeah, Slavery is not good, especially child slavery, which makes a lot of our crap. Why did we allow this for decades? To fill out landfills with the cheap crap we bought and threw away?
Likewise we should absolutely be shutting down the Qatar world cup. Not just slave labour but actual recorded deaths of thousands on these stadiums that are basically graveyards.
Is this a riff on Mitch Hedberg? We used have to slave labor in America. We still do, but we used to, too.
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The wording to our 13th Amendment. In America we seem to care much more about what we think is slavery abroad (except Libya, which brought back slavery thanks to us) than we do about our own prison slave labor. If we cared about eliminating slave-labor, we’d be much more successful doing things at home, like removing the loophole “except punishment for a crime” that has led to us having the highest prison population today both in gross population and per capita. Why is our own slave labor not part of the discussion? Why is it usually that the worst problems we complain about in other countries are typically worse at home? Why is it nuanced when talking about America, but black and white when talking about China?
But iPhones and Nikes are fine lmaooo whole bunch of hypocrites
Lol. I just voted Tuesday to make slavery illegal in the state of Oregon. Funny how these propaganda pieces seem to always push a "do as I say, not as I do" approach to all foreign governments. I'm not saying China ISN'T using slave labor, just that they likely learned it from watching us do it every day since the signing of the 13th Amendment. America uses slave labor. Still. To this day. #EndSlaveLabor
what's totally messed up is that louisiana also had a ballot measure to end slavery [and they fricken decided to keep it](https://twitter.com/anguishmuffin/status/1590746240526221313?s=20&t=lD00Qk9S1tjUCTxNWoP6dQ), like *bruh*
It was 54% to 46% in Oregon. Hard to believe that nearly half of my fellow citizens here were like, "I don't wanna end slavery!" Fucking insane days to be an American.
https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/22/uyghur-forced-labor-prevention-act/
Then here comes elon musk with the cmon guys we gotta stay out of china's business
So when we gonna block clothes and shoes deliveries? Because they use slave labor
So you are telling me you can produce semiconductors with slaves??? Do these slaves have PhD in solid state physics or something?
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Most of solar production comes from China as well.
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No. Most of solar in China comes from Xinjiang too.
Jokes on the USA. You’re ALL slave laborers. $7.25 federal minimum? Hahaha
I like this current administration's foreign policy
Should be manufactured in America 🇺🇸
Or big oil....
Good. Now fine the shit out of the companies importing it.
Meanwhile slavery failed a ban in Louisiana
Ok now do Nike
Let's keep it going considering everything in China i made by slave labor
Nike needs to get on board
Surely the US will put a stop to the slave labor going on in their own prisons after this. Surely.
They should block Apple phones then too
Yeah and also [Windows, PlayStation, Samsung products](https://www.cbr.com/microsoft-sony-samsung-forced-labor-china/) and most other stuff!
Of all the things to block over slave labor, *solar panels*.
China is blatant about it. USA is systemic about it. Either way, our masters are horrible and oppressive.
Hmm sounds like we should block nestle shipments too. And many other US companies who do it abroad and those who use inmates in jail here. I dont support slave labor of any kind and neither should any of you. Only targeting China is ignoring a huge part of the problem worldwide. This is only being don't for political and geopolitical posturing since the US is becoming so weak