The United States Fashion Industry Association (USFIA) joined a letter organized by the Cotton Campaign to the U.S. Department of Labor opposing the recent decision to remove cotton from Uzbekistan on the list of products made with forced or child labor. (More information on the decision is available in the Federal Register.) The Cotton Campaign argues that, despite some progress in Uzbekistan, cases of forced child labor still occurred during the 2017 harvest and local school administrators and teachers remained under pressure to force children into the fields to meet their annual cotton quotas. As a result, it is premature to remove Uzbek cotton from the EO13126 list until it can be verified that the Uzbek government has fully enacted the reforms to eliminate the drivers of forced child labor, particularly subjecting school officials to production quotas. The letter is available here.