The US Senate passed a bill on Thursday to ban imports from China's Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor, part of Washington's continued pushback against Beijing's treatment of the country's Uyghur Muslim minority.
The Senate passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act by unanimous consent and sent it to the White House, where President Joe Biden said he will sign it into law. The Bill was passed by the House of Representatives with a majority vote on Tuesday.
The measure was rushed through Congress this week after lawmakers agreed on a compromise that eliminated differences between Bills introduced in the House and Senate.
The Republicans and Democrats in the two chambers have been arguing over Uyghur legislation for months. The Senate has held up the confirmation of some of Biden's ambassadorial nominees, including his selection of Nicholas Burns to be ambassador to China, due to the dispute that came with the passage of the annual National Defense Authorization Act.
The lawmakers agreed to allow a vote on at least a number of candidates for diplomatic positions, including Burns, as they cleared the way for the Uyghur Bill's passage on Thursday.
A provision in the compromise legislation keeps it clear that all goods from Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has set up a network of detention camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim groups, were made with forced labor in order to prevent such imports.
Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican senator, said that it was a horrifying human rights situation, fully sanctioned by the Communist Party of China.
China denies that it is carrying out genocide in Xinjiang, which supplies much of the world's materials for solar panels, but the US government and many rights groups say that Beijing is carrying out genocide there.
Republicans accused Biden's Democrats of slow-walking the legislation because it would complicate the president's renewable energy agenda. Democrats denied that.
She said that we have a moral and economic imperative to eliminate this practice from our global supply chains, including those that run through Xinjiang, China, and exploit Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities.
In a new development on Thursday, the US government hit dozens of Chinese companies with investment and export restrictions, including top drone maker DJI, accusing them of complicity in the oppression of China's Uyghur minority or helping the military, ratcheting up tensions between the world's top two economies.