Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden is an honest politician. When you buy him, he stays bought. Nike, who has been tied to the Uyghur slave labor trade in China, where they produce their products, gave Wyden $60 thousand dollars over a 16 day period last fall. There was a bill that started in the House, where it passed unanimously. Then the bill got to the Senate, where Wyden blocked the bill. Just like he was paid to do.
But, the bill was too popular and the Senate overcame his block and the vote was unanimous. This could hurt Nike because the bill says that products made by slave labor cannot be imported into the United States. Biden has promised to sign the bill. I guess his Chinese masters told him he could.
Nike was the most active company to lobby against the bill. I guess they hoped the Democrats would vote their way. Democrats have always been fine with slavery, but it didn’t happen. I’m not sure how they will be able to determine which products were made by the Uyghurs. China is probably not going t cooperate because they make a fortune off the slave labor.
Nike said in a statement last year:
“Nike is committed to ethical and responsible manufacturing and we uphold international labor standards. We are concerned about reports of forced labor in, and connected to, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).”
“Nike does not source products from the XUAR and we have confirmed with our contract suppliers that they are not using textiles or spun yarn from the region.”
The forced labor bill would require companies that import products from factories in the Xinjiang province of China to provide “clear and convincing evidence” to U.S. customs authorities that the products had no ties to forced labor.
Wyden explained Wednesday that he would object to the legislation until Congress approved an extension of the child tax credit, a social spending program which no Senate Republican supports. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has also pushed back on the program’s inclusion in Biden’s budget bill making its way through Congress.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio — a sponsor of the bill and member of the CECC and Foreign Relations Committee — slammed Wyden’s actions, saying he was preventing passage of a popular law that could be signed into law this week for the sake of a contentious program. Even if the Senate were to pass a child tax credit extension, Rubio noted, the House would vote on it in January at the earliest.
