In case companies still think that forced labor enforcement is a hypothetical, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recently dropped 79 pages of guidance to light a fire under any complacency.
The 2026 CBP Forced Labor Enforcement Operational Guidance for Importers stitches relevant statutes, acronyms and enforcement mechanisms into a framework for importers. While none of it is actually new, heightened scrutiny and enforcement from the current administration created a need for more clarity—along with the expectation of due diligence, documentation and supply chain tracing.
This Operational Guidance expands and updates the 2022 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Operational Guidance for Importers to include all forced labor enforcement.
“This is a reminder that forced labor enforcement is not theoretical, it’s operational,” Nicole Bivens Collinson, a managing principal and operating committee member at Sandler Travis and Rosenberg, said on her podcast Two Minutes in Trade. The throughline is very blunt: “supply chain opacity is now an enforcement risk, not a governance nice to have.”
In short, CBP’s Withhold Release Order (WRO) follows a reasonable suspicion standard that can detain goods at the border. Importers have just three months to prove their products were not made with forced labor, and probable cause will trigger seizure. Through the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), goods manufactured in the nexus of North Korea and Xinjiang, China, respectively, create a presumption that forced labor was involved.
To help companies understand this new reality and operationalize these guidelines, Hertzman Global Intelligence caught up with Bivens Collinson, who explains this new reality and how to respond.
HGI: What do apparel importers/brands need to understand about enforcement today and how is this be different from the recent past?
Nicole Bivens Collinson: The new reality is that CBP is focused on enforcement, not facilitation. The directive from the President in many of his executive orders and proclamations has included instructions for CBP to enforce to the furthest extent possible the laws to ensure compliance. We are seeing more and more companies getting requests from CBP—in the form of [compliance and communication documents] CF 28’s and CF 29’s. And we are seeing questions about valuation and about the right to make entry. The most recent executive order regarding enforcement will implement on a more permanent basis some of the actions CBP is taking now through regulatory changes, possible legislative changes as well.
CBP works on metrics and they need to demonstrate to the President that they are acting on his directions. So they will likely have dashboards on their website citing how many seizures, or illegal transshipments they have prevented. They have returned to issuing withhold release orders (WROs) so we will see those metrics tick up. With the proposed changes to importer of record to try to eliminate or minimize non-resident importers of record, many apparel companies may have to locate in the U.S. or rearrange their business models.
HGI: What does due diligence need to look like now?
NBC: If an apparel company imported from China when the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act went into effect, then they have a leg up on other companies who have never had to trace their products from “dirt to shirt.” This type of documentation may be necessary for more imports regardless of country of origin. The guidance lays out due diligence expectations, documentation standards, and the playbook for admissibility, exceptions, protests and litigation when shipments get stuck. It also highlights a less comfortable reality: goods found in violation must be exported or destroyed.
HGI: How can apparel companies assess their risk, and what should they do?
NBC: Right now with the potential section 301 tariffs on countries that fail to have or enforce laws prohibiting the import of goods made with forced labor, companies must know their supply chains back to the dirt. The days of chasing fly-by-night vendors with the cheapest prices and not knowing anything about the supplier are dwindling fast.
Apparel companies need to know with whom they are dealing and in my opinion, the days of duty free entry are over. A 10% duty will be the new duty free. So moving goods to a new supplier in a different country should not be the first reaction; rather, waiting and assessing potential wider impacts on all countries, then making a move, is likely the best approach. Many of the lesser developed or small economies were exempted from the labor section 301 investigation, so perhaps those are potential options for sourcing and less risk of being hit with tariffs.
[To mitigate risk], you need to build end-to-end visibility, map your inputs beyond tier one, stress test your supplier attestations, pre-position documentation that can meet a clear and convincing standard on short notice, and if you uncover a problem, consider a prior disclosure before CBP before it finds it for you.
HGI: What are the top questions lawyers are getting related to forced labor now?
NBC: The top questions I get are: ‘What if I am a CTPAT [Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism] Tier 3 or CTPAT trade compliant company?’; ‘I already have instituted forced labor considerations and reviews into my supply chain, will I still be subject to the tariffs?’; ‘What if my goods are wholly the growth, produce or manufacture of a country with no potential for using imported forced labor inputs, will my goods be subject to the tariffs?’ We don’t know the answers to these questions, but it is certainly worth asking—and asking the government by submitting such questions before July 6!
