{"id":733,"date":"2021-06-22T12:45:11","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T09:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/?p=733"},"modified":"2021-06-22T12:45:13","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T09:45:13","slug":"politico-joe-biden-weighs-ban-on-solar-material-from-chinas-xinjiang-region-over-forced-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/politico-joe-biden-weighs-ban-on-solar-material-from-chinas-xinjiang-region-over-forced-labour\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICO | JOE BIDEN WEIGHS BAN ON SOLAR MATERIAL FROM CHINA\u2019S XINJIANG REGION OVER FORCED LABOUR"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South China Morning Post<\/a>. 22 June 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Below is an article published by South China Morning Post<\/a>. Photo:Reuters.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biden administration is considering banning imports into America of a critical solar panel material from China\u2019s\u00a0Xinjiang\u00a0region, according to four people familiar with the administration\u2019s plans \u2013 a move that would assuage bipartisan pressure to crack down on human rights abuses but could undermine the White House\u2019s aggressive climate change goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

At issue is polysilicon, the material inside most solar panels, which US President Joe Biden hopes will help replace fossil fuels and allow the US to eliminate carbon emissions from power generation by 2035.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently about half the world\u2019s supply of polysilicon comes from Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has been accused of rounding up hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uygur Muslims in what the State Department has labelled a \u201cgenocide\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe kind of brutality that we\u2019re talking about is offensive to just about anybody who would ever see these sorts of practices being used,\u201d said Representative Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat and one of the lawmakers pushing Biden to act. \u201cAnd they\u2019re doing it to the economic benefit of companies that are putting American companies at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

G7, Nato rhetoric mark \u2018seismic shift\u2019 between China and the West<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For months, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has pushed Biden to impose import restrictions on polysilicon similar to ones the Trump administration placed on cotton, tomatoes and other products exported from Xinjiang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the White House is considering an effective region-wide ban on polysilicon from Xinjiang, according to the four sources in the industry and on Capitol Hill with knowledge of administration plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ban, called a withhold release order (WRO), would allow Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to seize at US ports any imports it suspects of being made with forced labour.Though the agency is weighing a region-wide ban, it could also opt for narrower action against specific Xinjiang-based factories or companies, two of the sources said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would be in line with the strategy the Trump administration used, when it sanctioned shipments from a major Xinjiang paramilitary firm before imposing a subsequent region-wide ban on cotton products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A CBP official said the agency does not comment on whether specific entities are under investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timing of any potential order is uncertain. While some industry lobbyists have expected action for weeks, congressional sources say they have not yet been briefed on any imminent moves from CBP, a typical agency courtesy before major actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee called on the Biden administration last week to block imports of Chinese solar panels and other products that contain polysilicon made with forced labour in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US President Joe Biden is seen in the White House in Washington on Friday. Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They said that in a briefing earlier this year with congressional offices, CBP asserted that enforcement actions regarding polysilicon were forthcoming \u2013 but CBP has not yet taken any such step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a bit of frustration that with as bad as the world now understands things to be in Xinjiang and the effect that it\u2019s having, not only from a human rights standpoint but economic impact, we feel like there\u2019s plenty of information that gives them what they need to act,\u201d said Kildee, who led the letter alongside Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Democrats say there is \u201coverwhelming evidence\u201d of the use of forced labour in polysilicon production that exceeds the standard for action under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which prohibits the importation of merchandise mined, produced or manufactured in any country by forced or indentured labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI understand sometimes it takes time for Customs to investigate and make a determination,\u201d said Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon who has separately pressed the issue in the Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSupply chain issues can be incredibly complicated, and in some instances it\u2019s hard to get reliable information, particularly if you\u2019re talking about Xinjiang, [where] their information is tightly controlled. But aggressive, unrelenting enforcement is, to me, the prescription for this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden and fellow G7 nations vaulted the issue into focus at the recent summit, when countries signed on to a carefully worded joint communique that called on China \u201cto respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang\u201d. It did not lay out any specific action for the US, nor did it specifically link Xinjiang to the concerns of forced labour in the solar supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe basic notion in the communique was [to] call out Xinjiang in terms of its human rights abuses and then establish a neutral principle that all democracies can stand behind,\u201d National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan recently said aboard Air Force One.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are going to take concrete action and countermeasures against forced labour in these areas, and when you actually apply that in practice, that will have an impact on Xinjiang.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US declares China has committed genocide in its treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But some in the industry are sceptical of how effective a WRO would be in eradicating forced labour in the complex solar supply chain, given limited visibility into China\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat [WRO] cannot be the only mechanism because that is a slender reed on which we\u2019re hanging all of our enforcement efforts,\u201d one trade association official said. \u201cThat is not the strong international mechanism that we need to send a message to China that this is unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CBP\u2019s enforcement strategy for any upcoming trade ban is not yet clear. But in the case of the Xinjiang cotton ban, the agency has taken a hard line, forcing companies that import cotton products from China to trace their fibres all the way back through growth and processing. If companies cannot prove their fibres are not from Xinjiang, Customs seizes the shipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the solar industry, which is Coming off its latest record year of installations and is expected to see capacity quadruple this decade, the potential threat to supplies could hurt the supply chain, which is already slowing projects and raising costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That could slow deployment of the technology helping to drive Biden\u2019s effort to put the country on a path to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the power grid by 2035.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Solar Energy Industries Association led a pledge signed by hundreds of solar companies earlier this year committing to help ensure that the solar supply chain is free of forced labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also released a supply chain traceability protocol to help companies track products and components to the source, and called on its members to exit Xinjiang by the end of this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEIA President and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said that even if the administration did pursue a WRO that was targeted either at specific companies or Xinjiang, US solar panel companies were already taking action to avoid disruptions in the supply chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe spent the last nine months basically signalling to our companies that regardless of what actions the federal government took, they needed to take action to get out of there,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I think the vast majority of them have done that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cambodian fishermen see livelihoods threatened by climate change and dam activity<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cambodian fishermen see livelihoods threatened by climate change and dam activity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Roughly 45 per cent of the global supply of solar-grade polysilicon was produced by the four Xinjiang-based manufacturers in 2020, according to Germany-based Bernreuter Research. Another 35 per cent came from other regions in China, while the remaining 20 per cent came from outside China. SEIA has said it believes that is enough to supply the US, without polysilicon from Xinjiang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the US solar industry is already starting to feel broader solar supply chain constraints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A quarterly report from SEIA released last week cautioned that while average solar system prices remained relatively stable from the last quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of this year, key inputs for solar modules and installations, including polysilicon, are facing constraints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nikos Tsafos, interim director and senior fellow of energy security and climate change programmes at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, cautioned in a recent blog post that it would be difficult for the US to quickly restart its domestic manufacturing and exit Xinjiang without impacting deployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most current global ingot and wafer production capacity is in China, making polysilicon manufacturers also dependent on China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t really reshape industries that fast,\u201d Tsafos told POLITICO. \u201cI think there\u2019s an underlying reality, which is that China\u2019s very big in this industry, and you\u2019re not going to, in the course of any reasonable time frame, be able to get out of this dependence or codependence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kildee cautioned that any concerns of increased prices should not overtake the moral need to address forced labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFirst of all, prices are going to be a function of a lot of different variables. One, scale and volume, and the other is certainty,\u201d he said. \u201cBut third, and probably most importantly, the lowest price Coming from slave labour is not justifiable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South China Morning Post. 22 June 2021 Below is an article published by South China Morning Post. Photo:Reuters. The Biden administration is considering banning imports into America of a critical solar panel material from China\u2019s\u00a0Xinjiang\u00a0region, according to four people familiar with the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions\/734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}