Earlier this month, Rand released the Forced Labor in Global Supply Chains: Trade Enforcement Impacts and Opportunities report. The research was led by the RAND Homeland Security Research Division, which operates the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC). The project was funded by the Department of Homeland Security and was “designed to assist DHS in developing analytical capabilities for assessing the impact of its efforts to combat forced labor through trade enforcement and evaluating that impact. The report discusses the methods that we used to evaluate DHS’s impact and presents the result of the analyses, including findings on trade enforcement and recommendations for strengthening enforcement.”
Rand finds that the trade enforcement is making measurable progress, but “stakeholders are encountering impediments that DHS cannot address entirely on its own.” They also say that trade enforcement “cannot change China’s policy on forced labor in the XUAR” alone. Rand offers six recommendations to strengthen trade enforcement:
- Look for opportunities to encourage robust stakeholder participation by improving the flow and quality of information through greater transparency and improvements in tools, technology, and methods of data analysis.
- Consider a more comprehensive approach to combating forced labor in global supply chains by working with other U.S. agencies and other countries to better leverage potential complementarities of economic sanctions and other types of measures.
- Consider options for mitigating unintended consequences in concert with other U.S. agencies and with input from nongovernmental stakeholders, either by reducing them or responding to them, depending on their severity and likely prevalence.
- Work with other U.S. agencies to monitor indicators of progress and unintended consequences over time to better understand how conditions are evolving.
- Develop evidence with stakeholders to inform public debates on trade enforcement, including those on concerns about de minimis entries and environmental initiatives.
- Continue to make the case for funding and staffing, which are critical resources for trade enforcement and are likely to need to increase.