In November 2021, researchers at Sheffield Hallam University published a report tracing cotton from China's Xinjiang region to Western clothing brands. Their method was not undercover work. They queried a commercial database of U.S. shipping records tier by tier, from yarn to fabric to garment, until a brand name appeared.
The researchers
That report and its 2022 sequel on the car industry, which tied more than 100 carmakers and parts makers to suppliers in the region and lists customs records as a core source, helped drive a wave of enforcement. Under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, U.S. Customs detained 16,755 shipments worth $3.69 billion between June 2022 and July 2025.
The journalism came first. In December 2018 the Associated Press traced Badger Sportswear's supply to a factory inside an internment camp using data from ImportGenius; Badger stopped sourcing there. In March 2020 the AP used ImportGenius and Panjiva records to show a Chinese touch-screen maker under scrutiny had shipped 48 cartons to the company that builds McDonald's ordering kiosks.
The competitor with a lawyer
The same records support private lawsuits. In 2016 a federal appeals court let a whistleblower case against pipe-fitting maker Victaulic go forward; the entire case had been built from a paid shipping-manifest database and a survey of eBay listings. In March 2025 a flooring importer paid $8.1 million to settle duty-evasion claims. The whistleblower was a competitor, and its share of the settlement was about $1.2 million. In December 2025 a tungsten carbide company paid $54.4 million, the largest customs settlement of its kind so far.
A competitor earned $1.2 million by reading a rival's shipping records more carefully than the rival did.Evolutions Flooring settlement, U.S. Department of Justice, March 25, 2025. The relator's counsel has said the case began with public trade data.
The executives who wanted out
In October 2022 the Associated Press reported that executives from companies including Walmart, General Motors and Intel, sitting on a Customs advisory committee, had proposed that shipping records be made private by default. Those records cover about half of the $2.7 trillion of goods the United States imports each year. Labor advocates were blunt. One said, "Corporate America should be ashamed that their answer to this abuse is to end transparency."
We think both sides of that argument are right about something. The records have exposed real abuse, and the people doing that work should keep their access. The records have also handed every importer's supplier list to its competitors, which was never the purpose.
Where we stand
Protection through Customs Data Lock changes who can read your record, not what the government knows. U.S. Customs still sees every shipment. The public does not. Regulators, courts and the agencies that enforce labor law lose nothing. The company across the street loses a free supplier list.
We put a federal confidentiality protection in place for every entity and name you ship under, and we keep watching the platforms after that. Everyone who is entitled to read your record still can. Everyone else stops.
Sources
- Laundering cotton: how Xinjiang cotton is obscured in international supply chains, Annex C · Sheffield Hallam University, Nov 2021
- Driving force: automotive supply chains and forced labor · Sheffield Hallam University, Dec 2022, updated Jul 2025
- U.S. updates strategy to combat forced labor · American Association of Exporters and Importers, 2025
- U.S. sportswear traced to factory in China’s internment camps · Associated Press via CBS News, Dec 17, 2018
- Are forced-labor Uyghurs making Apple and Samsung phones? · Associated Press via Christian Science Monitor, Mar 5, 2020
- United States ex rel. Customs Fraud Investigations v. Victaulic Co. · U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Oct 5, 2016
- Evolutions Flooring and its owners pay $8.1 million to settle False Claims Act allegations · U.S. Department of Justice, Mar 25, 2025
- DOJ continues to use the False Claims Act to address customs violations · Mayer Brown, Jan 2026
- U.S. businesses propose hiding trade data used to trace labor abuses · Associated Press via Federal Times, Oct 18, 2022
