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Addition to include ths Supply Trace project link Professor Bhimani is talking about: https://www.supplytrace.org

Shawn Bhimani, assistant professor of supply chain management at Northeastern University, leads Northeastern’s Supply Trace project, an open-access platform that uses machine learning and shipping data — and on-the-ground investigations — to link forced labor to international trade transactions.

The Biden administration has added 26 more companies to the list of Chinese textile traders and manufacturers whose goods are blocked from entering the United States because of their alleged ties to forced labor.

The banned imports, known as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, names businesses that are said to be involved in exploiting forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. The announcement brings the total number of banned companies to 65.

The act, passed by Congress in 2021 and enacted in June 2022, prohibits the import of any goods made in Xinjiang from entering the U.S.

Shawn Bhimani, assistant professor of supply chain management at Northeastern University, says 90% of the cotton in China is grown in Xinjiang. Other industries, he says, such as solar and electronics, are also tainted by the Uyghur human rights abuses.

Bhimani leads Northeastern’s Supply Trace project, an open-access digital platform that uses machine learning and shipping data — as well as on-the-ground investigations — to link forced labor to international trade transactions.

Northeastern Global News spoke to Bhimani about the evidence the U.S. government has of the alleged human rights violations in China, as well as how Supply Trace helps companies and consumers to make ethical decisions.

Q1 - How do you define “forced labor” and how big is this problem globally?

The International Labor Organization defines forced labor as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily.” If I was to simplify, its people working against their will.

Forced labor is estimated currently at 27 to 28 million people globally [comparable to the population of Australia]. It is a subset of what some people refer to as modern slavery.

Q2 - Where in the world does forced labor happen most?

The highest problems of forced labor occur in India [11 million people] based on the 2023 estimates by the Global Slavery Index. China is also on their list.

China is much more in the news and in focus right now because of multiple political discussions that are happening this year. Part of it is tariffs that were levied against China two days ago by the Biden administration.

Part of it is because the Chinese government has been committing human rights abuses against the Uyghur population for many years. Because of that, the U.S. Congress passed in 2021 the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which prohibits the importation of any goods made in whole or in part, in Xinjiang [province] from entering the U.S. That law was enforced in June of 2022.

The U.S. government continues to build out credible evidence and a list of entities that should be avoided in business transactions.

Recent testing shows that of goods coming into the U.S. 20% of the apparel was still being made with Xinjiang cotton.

Q3 - How does the U.S. government know that these human rights abuses, including forced labor, are happening?

We have victim testimony. People who are from that region are able to provide testimony of the atrocities that are occurring, which are not limited to forced labor.

Additionally, we are able to leverage the fact that shipments coming out of China into the U.S. and other Western markets are traceable.

As part of our Supply Trace project, we trace shipments from factories in China with known links to Xinjiang and make it clear that those factories are shipping to the U.S. companies in our pilot phase of the platform. As we grow, there will be companies all over the world that are buying these products made by victims of forced labor.

We use shipping records of goods that travel by ocean freight. We also look at investigations performed on factories within China, where we look at their public disclosures on where the materials come from and who their customers and clients are.

Q4 - How can American companies vet their supply chain?

It is imperative that companies comply with the [Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act] and the list of banned companies.

About 90% of the cotton from China is from Xinjiang, which means that there’s a 90% chance that any cotton that China exports has Xinjiang fibers in it. There are so many other industries such as solar or electronics or others that are tainted by bigger human rights abuses in China.

When it comes to other countries, and other areas [of China], there are business advisories or recommendations of where companies should consider exercising caution. They can do this by vetting their supply chain by mapping it, by understanding known areas of risk and performing due diligence… for example, factory investigations to ensure that there’s no forced labor happening out of the facility.

They need to think about corrective action and in the case of Uyghur human rights abuses, they need to change their sourcing locations.

Many companies don’t know where to start. They don’t know what to do with the list. They don’t even know sometimes if their suppliers are connected to Xinjiang.

So what we do is we create an open-access website where they can see a map of their supply chain based on shipping records. We use machine learning to connect the dots for them. We also provide resources if a company realizes they are connected [to forced labor] on what to do about it.

Q5 - How can consumers figure out if a brand was produced with forced labor?

Supply Trace is open to everyone. It is an equal access platform, so anyone anywhere in the world can access it. There is no paywall. You type in the name of the brand or a factory and see potential risk and make better, more informed decisions.

Sometimes products do not ship directly from China to the U.S. They go through a third-party country before they arrive in the U.S.

Q6 - How have these bans affected China?

We know that after passing of the law in 2021, and enforced in 2022, Customs Border Patrol has stopped over $3 billion worth of goods at the U.S. border to comply with the UFLPA.

We also know because of our own research that we’ve been conducting, that we have seen a decrease in raw cotton from China entering the United States because of companies trying to comply with this law.

However, in our recent research we found that retail products that are made in part with [Xinjiang] cotton have not significantly decreased, which is another way of saying we’re still importing those products tainted with human rights abuses.

The United States has barred imports from 26 Chinese cotton traders or warehouse facilities on Thursday as part of its effort to eliminate goods made with the forced labor of Uyghur minorities from the US supply chain.

The companies are the latest additions to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List that restricts the import of goods tied to what the US government has characterized as an ongoing genocide of minorities in China’s Xinjiang region.

US officials believe Chinese authorities have established labor camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in China’s western Xinjiang region. Beijing denies any abuses.

Many of the cotton companies listed are based outside of Xinjiang but source their cotton from the region, the US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

The designations help “responsible companies conduct due diligence so that, together, we can keep the products of forced labor out of our country,” Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, said in the statement.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington criticized the move.

"The so-called ‘Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act’ is just an instrument of a few US politicians to disrupt stability in Xinjiang and contain China’s development,” the spokesperson said.

Washington has restricted imports from 65 entities since the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List law was passed in 2021, according to the department.

“We enthusiastically endorse DHS’s action today to nearly double the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act’s ‘Entity List’ — while recognizing that the current list remains only a fraction of the businesses complicit in forced labor,” Representative Chris Smith and Senator Jeff Merkley, chairs of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said in a statement.

The lawmakers want DHS to blacklist Chinese companies in the polysilicon, aluminum, PVC and rayon industries and any company in other parts of Asia making goods for the US market with inputs sourced from Xinjiang.

By Tinglong Dai, Bernard T. Ferrari Professor of Business, Johns Hopkins University

In June 2019, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted: “Trump doesn’t get the basics. He thinks his tariffs are being paid by China. Any freshman econ student could tell you that the American people are paying his tariffs.”

Fast-forward five years to May 2024, and President Biden has announced a hike in tariffs on a variety of Chinese imports, including a 100% tariff that would significantly increase the price of Chinese-made electric vehicles.

For a nation committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, efforts by the U.S. to block low-cost EVs might seem counterproductive. At a price of around US$12,000, Chinese automaker BYD’s Seagull electric car could quickly expand EV sales if it landed at that price in the U.S., where the cheapest new electric cars cost nearly three times more.

As an expert in global supply chains, however, I believe the Biden tariffs can succeed in giving the U.S. EV industry room to grow. Without the tariffs, U.S. auto sales risk being undercut by Chinese companies, which have much lower production costs due to their manufacturing methods, looser environmental and safety standards, cheaper labor and more generous government EV subsidies.

Tariffs have a troubled history

The U.S. has a long history of tariffs that have failed to achieve their economic goals.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was meant to protect American jobs by raising tariffs on imported goods. But it backfired by prompting other countries to raise their tariffs, which led to a drop in international trade and deepened the Great Depression.

Biden speaks at a podium with people standing behind him holding United Steelworkers signs.

President George W. Bush’s 2002 steel tariffs also led to higher steel prices, which hurt industries that use steel and cost American manufacturing an estimated 200,000 jobs. The tariffs were lifted after the World Trade Organization ruled against them.

The Obama administration’s tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels in 2012 blocked direct imports but failed to foster a domestic solar panel industry. Today, the U.S. relies heavily on imports from companies operating in Southeast Asia – primarily Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Many of those companies are linked to China.

Why EV tariffs are different this time

Biden’s EV tariffs, however, might defy historical precedent and succeed where the solar tariff failed, for a few key reasons:

1. Timing matters.

When Obama imposed tariffs on solar panels in 2012, nearly half of U.S. installations were already using Chinese-manufactured panels. In contrast, Chinese-made EVs, including models sold in the U.S. by Volvo and Polestar, have negligible U.S. market shares.

Because the U.S. market is not dependent on Chinese-made EVs, the tariffs can be implemented without significant disruption or price increases, giving the domestic industry time to grow and compete more effectively.

By imposing tariffs early, the Biden administration hopes to prevent the U.S. market from becoming saturated with low-price Chinese EVs, which could undercut domestic manufacturers and stifle innovation.

2. Global supply chains are not the same today.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains, such as the risk of disruptions in the availability of critical components and delays in production and shipping. These issues prompted many countries, including the U.S., to reevaluate their dependence on foreign manufacturers for critical goods and to shift toward reshoring – bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. – and strengthening domestic supply chains.

The war in Ukraine has further intensified the separation between U.S.-led and China-led economic orders, a phenomenon I call the “Supply Chain Iron Curtain.”

In a recent McKinsey survey, 67% of executives cited geopolitical risk as the greatest threat to global growth. In this context, EVs and their components, particularly batteries, are key products identified in Biden’s supply chain reviews as critical to the nation’s supply chain resilience.

Ensuring a stable and secure supply of these components through domestic manufacturing can mitigate the risks associated with global supply chain disruptions and geopolitical tensions.

3. National security concerns are higher.

Unlike solar panels, EVs have direct national security implications. The Biden administration considers Chinese-made EVs a potential cybersecurity threat due to the possibility of embedded software that could be used for surveillance or cyberattacks.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has discussed espionage risks involving the potential for foreign-made EVs to collect sensitive data and transmit it outside the U.S. Officials have raised concerns about the resilience of an EV supply chain dependent on other countries in the event of a geopolitical conflict.

BYD targets EV sales in Mexico

While Biden’s EV tariffs might succeed in keeping Chinese competition out for a while, Chinese EV manufacturers could try to circumvent the tariffs by moving production to countries such as Mexico.

This scenario is similar to past tactics used by Chinese solar panel manufacturers, which relocated production to other Asian countries to avoid U.S. tariffs.

Chinese automaker BYD, the world leader in EV sales, is already exploring establishing a factory in Mexico to produce its new electric truck. Nearly 10% of cars sold in Mexico in 2023 were produced by Chinese automakers.

Given the changing geopolitical reality, Biden’s 100% EV tariffs are likely the beginning of a broader strategy rather than an isolated measure. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai hinted at this during a recent press conference, stating that addressing vehicles made in Mexico would require “a separate pathway” and to “stay tuned” for future actions.

Is Europe next?

For now, given the near absence of Chinese-made EVs in the U.S. auto market, Biden’s EV tariffs are unlikely to have a noticeable short-term impact in the U.S. They could, however, affect decisions in Europe.

The European Union saw Chinese EV imports more than double over a seven-month period in 2023, undercutting European vehicles by offering lower prices. Manufacturers are concerned. When finance ministers from the Group of Seven advanced democracies meet in late May, tariffs will be on the agenda.

Biden’s move might encourage similar protective actions elsewhere, reinforcing the global shift toward securing supply chains and promoting domestic manufacturing.

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Oh, and restoration of firearms rights.

Archived link (without Cloudflare).

Here is the link in Spanish (archived version)

Poynter’s PolitiFact, the Pulitzer-Prize winning fact-checking newsroom, is pleased to announce the launch of a new Spanish-language experience, PolitiFact en Español, to help more than 40 million Spanish-speakers in the U.S. sort out the truth in politics.

A new Spanish-language website and a related social media presence are the culmination of an effort that began in 2023 when PolitiFact launched a Spanish-language team. The team’s fact-checks have appeared on pages of PolitiFact’s existing website and via Telemundo stations in Florida through a partnership that brings fact checks to the stations’ newscasts, digital and streaming platforms. But starting this month, a newly launched website www.politifact.com/espanol/ provides an excellent user experience in Spanish.

"We are excited about taking this next step to better serve the millions of people in the United States who consume news primarily in Spanish," said Katie Sanders, PolitiFact editor-in-chief.

Deputy Editor Miriam Valverde, who started fact-checking immigration claims for PolitiFact in 2016, leads PolitiFact en Español and its team of Spanish-speaking reporters.

"Our new website and social media presence will provide Spanish speakers with fact-based information and help them guard against dangerous misinformation that is increasingly pervasive across platforms," Valverde said.

The free website features fact checks from the PolitiFact en Español team, who root out Spanish-language misinformation in its many forms, and write in-depth stories and fact checks. Much of the fact-checking falls under Meta’s third-party fact-checking program, debunking misinformation on Instagram and Facebook. The team also translates trending fact checks and stories, both from English to Spanish and vice versa.

Valverde said the premise was not to simply copy PolitlFact.com into Spanish, but to find ways to best serve the target audience. To that end, the effort has included launching a WhatsApp tipline to solicit reader ideas, as well as a WhatsApp channel. PolitiFact en Español also is active on TikTok and Instagram.

With the 2024 U.S. presidential election later this year, and Hispanic voters a coveted demographic from both parties, there will be no shortage of political claims to check, Sanders said.

"It’s especially important that PolitiFact en Español is a resource for Spanish-speaking voters, who will be bombarded with political messages, many of them false, during the campaign season," she said.

Other partnerships include FactChequeado, a fact-checking organization that shares PolitiFact’s work with its network that includes Hispanic media outlets. PolitiFact also has a partnership with Telemundo and NBCUniversal’s TV stations in Florida to bring its fact-checks to the stations’ newscasts, digital, mobile and streaming platforms.

US President Joe Biden has ordered a Chinese-owned cryptocurrency miner and its partners to sell land they own near a US nuclear missile base, citing spying concerns.

MineOne Partners, which the White House says is majority-owned by Chinese citizens, has been given 120 days to sell the property, where it runs a crypto-mining operation.

The land is less than a mile (1.6km) away from an air force base in Wyoming, where intercontinental ballistic missiles are stored.

BBC News has contacted MineOne Partners and China's embassy in the US for comment.

"The proximity of the foreign-owned Real Estate to a strategic missile base... and the presence of specialised and foreign-sourced equipment potentially capable of facilitating surveillance and espionage activities, presents a national security risk", the White House said in a statement.

Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming is home to Minuteman III nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.

MineOne bought the land close to the military base in 2022 and later installed cryptocurrency mining equipment.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), a powerful body that scrutinises deals for national security security threats, was not notified about the purchase by the company, the White House said.

Authorities were alerted to the transaction after a tipoff from a member of the public.

The inter-agency panel, which is led by the US Treasury Department, determined that the purchase had national security implications.

President Biden's decision to force MineOne to sell the land "highlights the critical gatekeeper role that CFIUS serves to ensure that foreign investment does not undermine our national security”, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

There has been growing concern among US lawmakers about Chinese purchases of property near sensitive military facilities.

The latest announcement from the White House comes just a day before the Biden administration is set to sharply increase tariffs on several Chinese imports, including electric vehicles.

A cyberattack on the Ascension health system operating in 19 states across the U.S. forced some of its 140 hospitals to divert ambulances, caused patients to postpone medical tests and blocked online access to patient records

A cyberattack on the Ascension health system operating in 19 states across the U.S. forced some of its 140 hospitals to divert ambulances, caused patients to postpone medical tests and blocked online access to patient records.

An Ascension spokesperson said it detected “unusual activity” Wednesday on its computer network systems. Officials refused to say whether the non-profit Catholic health system, based in St. Louis, was the victim of a ransomware attack or whether it had paid a ransom, and it did not immediately respond to an email seeking updates.

But the attack had the hallmarks of a ransomware, and Ascension said it had called in Mandiant, the Google cybersecurity unit that is a leading responder to such attacks. Earlier this year, a cyberattack on Change Healthcare disrupted care systems nationwide, and the CEO of its parent, UnitedHealth Group Inc., acknowledged in testimony to Congress that it had paid a ransom of $22 million in bitcoin.

Ascension said that both its electronic records system and the MyChart system that gives patients access to their records and allows them to communicate with their doctors were offline.

“We have determined this is a cybersecurity incident,” the national Ascension spokesperson’s statement said. “Our investigation and restoration work will take time to complete, and we do not have a timeline for completion.”

To prevent the automated spread of ransomware, hospital IT officials typically take electronic medical records and appointment-scheduling systems offline. UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty told congressional committees that Change Healthcare immediately disconnected from other systems to prevent the attack from spreading during its incident.

The Ascension spokesperson's latest statement, issued Thursday, said ambulances had been diverted from “several” hospitals without naming them.

In Wichita, Kansas, local news reports said the local emergency medical services started diverting all ambulance calls from its hospitals there Wednesday, though the health system's spokesperson there said Friday that the full diversion of ambulances ended Thursday afternoon.

The EMS service for Pensacola, Florida, also diverted patients from the Ascension hospital there to other hospitals, its spokesperson told the Pensacola News Journal.

And WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee reported that Ascension patients in the area said they were missing CT scans and mammograms and couldn't refill prescriptions.

Connie Smith, president of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, is among the Ascension providers turning to paper records this week to cope. Smith, who coordinates surgeries at Ascension St. Francis Hospital in Milwaukee, said the hospital didn’t cancel any surgical procedures and continued treating emergency patients.

But she said everything has slowed down because electronic systems are built into the hospital’s daily operations. Younger providers are often unfamiliar with paper copies of essential records and it takes more time to document patient care, check the results of prior lab tests and verify information with doctors’ offices, she said.

Smith said union leaders feel staff and service cutbacks have made the situation even tougher. Hospital staff also have received little information about what led to the attack or when operations might get closer to normal, she said.

“You’re doing everything to the best of your ability but you leave feeling frustrated because you know you could have done things faster or gotten that patient home sooner if you just had some extra hands,” Smith said.

Ascension said its system expected to use “downtime” procedures “for some time” and advised patients to bring notes on their symptoms and a list of prescription numbers or prescription bottles with them to appointments.

Cybersecurity experts say ransomware attacks have increased substantially in recent years, especially in the health care sector. Increasingly, ransomware gangs steal data before activating data-scrambling malware that paralyzes networks. The threat of making stolen data public is used to extort payments. That data can also be sold online.

“We are working around the clock with internal and external advisors to investigate, contain, and restore our systems,” the Ascension spokesperson's latest statement said.

The attack against Change Healthcare earlier this year delayed insurance reimbursements and heaped stress on doctor’s offices around the country. Change Healthcare provides technology used by doctor offices and other care providers to submit and process billions of insurance claims a year.

It was unclear Friday whether the same group was responsible for both attacks.

Witty said Change Healthcare's core systems were now fully functional. But company officials have said it may take several months of analysis to identify and notify those who were affected by the attack.

They also have said they see no signs that doctor charts or full medical histories were released after the attack. Witty told senators that UnitedHealth repels an attempted intrusion every 70 seconds.

A ransomware attack in November prompted the Ardent Health Services system, operating 30 hospitals in six states, to divert patients from some of its emergency rooms to other hospitals while postponing certain elective procedures.

Here is the archived version.

If people are naturally drawn to human rights, democracy, and freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned.

The American extreme right and (more rarely) the extreme left benefit from the spread of antidemocratic narratives, they have an interest in silencing or hobbling any group that wants to stop, or even identify, foreign campaigns.

Senator Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that “we are actually less prepared today than we were four years ago” for foreign attempts to influence the 2024 election. This is not only because authoritarian propaganda campaigns have become more sophisticated as they begin to use AI, or because “you obviously have a political environment here where there’s a lot more Americans who are more distrustful of all institutions.” It’s also because the lawsuits, threats, and smear tactics have chilled government, academic, and tech-company responses.

One could call this a secret authoritarian “plot” to preserve the ability to spread antidemocratic conspiracy theories, except that it’s not a secret. It’s all visible, right on the surface. Russia, China, and sometimes other state actors—Venezuela, Iran, Hungary—work with Americans to discredit democracy, to undermine the credibility of democratic leaders, to mock the rule of law. They do so with the goal of electing Trump, whose second presidency would damage the image of democracy around the world, as well as the stability of democracy in America, even further.