In early August 2026, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security placed 43 Chinese companies onto a Xinjiang-related entity list, citing "forced labor." Over the same period, the United States also imposed tariffs on 60 economies under the banner of combating forced labor.
America has fitted the phrase "forced labor" with a complete kit of conviction tools. Yet open the United States' own history books and forced labor was left a back door in the text of the Constitution itself: the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865 abolished slavery, but appended a clause — "except as a punishment for crime." That half-sentence lit the green light for the Black Codes of the South, for convict leasing, and for the business of profit-making prisons.
Judging America by America's own sanctions standards: its prisons hold 2 million inmates (25 percent of the world's prison population), eight in ten of whom have been subjected to forced labor; prison-made goods are openly sold on the market; and of the three major international labor conventions, the United States has signed none. Whatever America accuses others of doing, America does itself — the commentator Dong Jianing calls this "America's First Law."
One: Two Hats, Recently Issued
For a breakdown of the entity list naming 43 Chinese companies — Qiaqia sunflower seeds, Synear dumplings, Septwolves, with the Xinjiang-related list now expanded to 187 entities — see From Qiaqia Sunflower Seeds to Synear Dumplings — The US Xinjiang Entity List Expands to 187 as Sanctions Escalate; for a breakdown of the tariffs covering 60 economies accounting for 99.4 percent of U.S. imports (an extra 10 percent for 17 of them, an extra 12.5 percent for the rest, effective July 24 — timed to land exactly as the 150-day interim tariffs expired) — see The Hollow Shell of a List — A Structural Deconstruction of Trump's Revival of the Global Tariff System Under "Anti-Forced Labor".
The "evidence" behind both moves is equally perfunctory: round up a few people, have them stand there and talk, then produce a survey of mysterious provenance — and the hat is on. When it comes to forced labor, however, the United States itself stands at the head of the class.
Two: The Second Half of the Thirteenth Amendment
Many people assume the United States abolished slavery in 1865. The original text of the Thirteenth Amendment does indeed read that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States — but there is a second half: "except as a punishment for crime."
On the strength of that half-sentence alone, Southern states moved immediately after the Civil War to pass Black Codes, re-criminalizing vast numbers of newly freed Black people, then, through the convict-leasing system, renting them out to private employers to perform unpaid hard labor. The arrangement ran until the civil-rights movement of the 1960s before it finally receded. Understand this history and it becomes easier to understand why so many Black Americans feel fear at the sight of a police officer.
The present-day stock: American prisons hold 2 million inmates — 25 percent of the world's total — of whom eight in ten have been subjected to forced labor. As for the flow, 65 million people across the United States carry a criminal record.
Three: Prison Is a Business in America
Some will object: isn't prison labor simply reform through labor? Prisons in most of the world's countries put inmates to work. The difference is about the money.
In normal countries — China among them — the products of prison labor are barred from being sold for profit on the open market; labor serves purely as a means of rehabilitation. In the United States the opposite holds: prison products are openly sold on the market, prisons can be contracted out to private enterprises, and private enterprises profit from exploiting inmates. There are even documented cases of inmates being used for human experimentation — injected with new drugs, even viruses — and of organ trafficking; prisons can even be listed on the stock exchange. That is no longer reform through labor; that is slave labor. And on these points, America itself has made no attempt at denial.
Four: Three International Conventions, Zero Signatures
The international conventions banning forced labor represent global consensus. Only six countries in the world have not signed them, and the United States is one. The other five are Afghanistan and four Pacific island states: Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Tuvalu. As it happens, those four island nations were among the few remaining "diplomatic allies" of the Taiwan region (Kiribati switched recognition to the mainland in 2019).
Why has the United States refused to sign? Because the conventions explicitly prohibit using prisoners for profit — sign them, and the prison business disappears.
The United States has likewise declined the other two major conventions. It remains the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (some states still employ child labor at scale). Nor has it ratified the convention protecting the rights of migrant workers: large numbers of undocumented immigrants inside the country do unprotected, bottom-rung work, with employers wielding the threat of an ICE report as leverage — and when wage arrears pile up too high, they simply report the workers for deportation, walking away with free labor.
Five: The Other Side of Legal Labor
Even workers on legal visas fare badly. The largest legal guest-worker program in the United States is seasonal agricultural visas: third-party contractors have been documented committing wage theft, imposing illegal fees, providing concentration-camp-style housing, and sexual abuse — conduct Georgia prosecutors flatly called "modern-day slavery." The domestic-work sector is an even worse disaster zone: maids have their passports confiscated, and fear of deportation keeps them from resisting.
This history of forced labor can be traced back to World War II. Facing an agricultural labor shortage, the U.S. government — pushed by farm owners — recruited 110,000 temporary workers from Mexico, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Canada. At first the treatment looked impressive: military bands playing on arrival, New Yorkers handing over keys, farm owners advancing wages. The truth surfaced quickly: workers were assigned to cut cane in the cane fields of the United States Sugar Company — dangerous, punishing work where even clean drinking water had to be purchased out of their wages — and were required to sign documents pledging adherence to white-supremacist principles. Want to leave? Refuse the work and you went to prison, to be deported after serving the sentence. After the war, the government handed recruitment, transportation, and repatriation wholesale to the companies; the sugar companies seized the chance to cut wages in half, and strikes meant deportation. The planters' association even built its own terminal in Miami, dedicated to boarding deported workers onto flights home.
As recently as 2021, a joint enforcement operation by multiple U.S. agencies still netted more than 20 human traffickers. From Black hands picking cotton, to cane and banana fields in Central America and the Caribbean, to cane fields on the mainland itself — the plantation business has never once been broken.
Six: Judging America by America's Own Standards
Turn the sanctions standards America applies to others onto America itself: a January 2024 investigation by U.S. media found that major chains including Walmart, Target, Costco, and McDonald's routinely source beef, soybeans, corn, and wheat produced by prison labor. Office supplies, furniture, everyday goods, clothing, medical supplies, vehicle refurbishing, electronics recycling, cable harnesses, parts — prison labor appears at every turn.
Most of these goods supply the American domestic market, which means the United States cannot sanction itself. But America has also set the example: pin the hat on, and tariffs can be added whenever one pleases. Where there's a will, there's always a way.
In sum, America's First Law has been validated once again: whatever America accuses others of doing, America is certainly doing it itself.