New CTPAT Updates Like TSA Pre-Check for Modern Slavery
A voluntary supply chain initiative aimed at boosting post-9/11 border security just hit an important milestone.
Effective Aug. 1, all trade compliance members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, a.k.a. CTPAT, will have to comply with new minimum security criteria related to forced labor, such as creating a code of conduct statement, demonstrating risk-based business mapping, furnishing proof of a social compliance program, providing due-diligence training for suppliers and offering plans for remediation.
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Previously, the requirements only had to be met by new program applicants, not existing participants wishing to remain in the scheme.
CTPAT casts a wide net, Marissa Brock, director of marketing and policy at supply chain traceability platform Sourcemap, told Sourcing Journal. Unlike the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which zooms in on products hailing from China’s Xinjiang region with the coerced labor of persecuted Muslim minorities in mind, the program is geographically agnostic.
“You have to conduct risk-based mapping regardless of where you’re sourcing from and really identify whether you have areas in your supply chain that may be at the risk of forced labor,” she said.
Still, companies should see these new stipulations not as a burden but as a benefit, Brock said. By requiring more robust relationships with their suppliers, importers can better ensure that they’re working with the right people.
“It allows for that additional layer of visibility to ensure that your suppliers really are adhering to the standards that the company has set forth and also that CTPAT and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have set forth,” she said.
Importers that are proactive about forced labor in their supply chains, both in terms of risk and corrective action, are also getting ahead of any potential detentions under the UFLPA, Brock said.
“Really, the objective here with these additional requirements under the trade compliance program is to ensure that CTPAT members are really going above and beyond to ensure that their supply chains are free of forced labor,” she added. “They’ve done the work to gain that visibility into their supply chains, identify where risk is occurring and make appropriate sourcing decisions accordingly.”
While CTPAT participants are still beholden to the UFLPA and can face ULFPA-based detentions, one perk of membership is CBP will provide advance notice of any seizure after a shipment is filed for cargo into the United States. Another plus? Members get priority review of admissibility should goods be detained.
And here’s where all that elbow grease pays off.
“In the event that you have consistently demonstrated that your supply chain is free of forced labor, according to CBP, the likelihood that you will get repeated detentions is significantly lowered as a CTPAT member,” Brock said.
One way to think of the new requirements is as TSA Pre-Check, but for modern slavery.
“Where you’ve already done the work, we know that there isn’t as much risk in this supply chain,” she said. “And so that is really an objective of CBP at this stage.”
Brock said that this enhanced level of visibility is really the “cost of business” at this point for anyone importing into the United States. And that it’s critical for CTPAT members to understand that forced labor extends beyond cotton from Xinjiang.
“There’s a bit of a misconception that CBP is just focused on products originating from the XUAR and that is absolutely not the case,” she said, using the acronym for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. “If you look at which parts of the world have received Withhold Release Orders from the U.S. government, it absolutely is not just China.”
Even the majority of detentions under the UFLPA stem not from China but from Malaysia, Vietnam and elsewhere. For Brock, this means CBP is keeping its eyes peeled on third-country manufacturing.
“That is really the key for forced labor due diligence writ large—understanding that forced labor can happen at any stage of the supply chain,” Brock said. “You can’t just rely on an understanding of your direct suppliers; you really do have to have that 100 percent visibility because any degree of opaqueness within your supply chain puts you at high risk of forced labor.”
