TOKYO — Japan’s Fast Retailing, the operator of the Uniqlo casualwear chain, said Wednesday it has confirmed that the company’s cotton is produced without forced labor after reports that U.S. customs officials blocked shipments of the retailer’s shirts in January on suspicion of links to the Xinjiang region of China.
A Customs and Border Protection document dated May 10 shows that the agency confiscated the shirts at the Port of Los Angeles, suspecting they were made by Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.
The seizure highlights how allegations of Chinese human rights abuses against the Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang have become a risk for Japanese companies. The U.S. in December banned shipments of cotton products made by XPCC due to suspicions of forced labor in the region.
Fast Retailing — Japan’s sixth most valuable listed company — on Wednesday called the U.S. customs decision “very regrettable.”
According to the customs document, Uniqlo said the raw cotton used in the shirts was produced in Australia, the U.S. and Brazil, with no connections to Uyghur labor.
The U.S. agency said Uniqlo failed to provide enough evidence that its products were free from forced labor, citing a lack of information on the production process and insufficient production records.
North American sales make up only a few percent of Fast Retailing’s total, so the blocked shipment is expected to have a minimal impact on the company’s earnings.
CEO Tadashi Yanai declined to comment on questions regarding cotton in the Xinjiang region during a news conference in April, but the company addressed the matter in an August 2020 statement.
“No Uniqlo product is manufactured in the Xinjiang region,” Fast Retailing said in the statement. “In addition, no Uniqlo production partners subcontract to fabric mills or spinning mills in the region.”
