If you're buying a car, electronics, clothing, or beverages from one of dozens of major household names, you could be buying products made in part by forced labor in the Xinjiang region of China.
That's despite efforts by companies over the past year to diversify their supply chains and comply with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law after evidence emerged of human-rights abuses committed by the Chinese government against Uyghur Muslims, including forced labor, government surveillance, forced sterilization, and reeducation camps. Some have called the treatment a genocide.
Many companies are still intertwined with China, however. A new investigation from Britain's Sheffield Hallam University found "massive and expanding links" between major car companies and China's Xinjiang region.
The 78-page report says "every major car brand" — including Ford, GM, Tesla, and Toyota — is at "high risk" of sourcing parts from companies linked to these human-rights abuses. Volkswagen, BMW, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and NIO were the other car companies referenced in the report.
"There was no part of the car we researched that was untainted by Uyghur forced labor," the team's lead researcher, Laura Murphy, told The New York Times. "It's an industry-wide problem."
And it's not just cars. Many more household brands have been suspected of having links to forced labor in the Xinjiang region. Insider compiled a list of the 93 other companies named in one or both of the following reports: the 2020 Congressional-Executive Commission on China and a 2020 report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Even more companies, many of them not well-known in the US, have been named in other reports.
Many companies have challenged their inclusion in these reports, while others say they have taken steps in recent years to improve their supply chains. Insider reached out to all the major brands listed below for comment. The final slide contains an exhaustive list of companies that could be linked to forced labor, according to the reports.