Republican senators urge Biden administration to probe popular Chinese e-commerce sites
Senators Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton have called for an investigation by the Biden administration into Chinese-owned e-commerce platforms Shein and Temu. Cotton expressed concerns about Temu posing risks similar to TikTok for Americans. The senators allege that these sites exploit U.S. trade laws, undercut American businesses, use forced labor, compromise data, and have strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) have both written letters to the Biden administration, calling for an investigation into Chinese-owned online retail sites Shein and Temu.
Cotton argued that Temu, in particular, poses a similar risk to Americans as TikTok does.
In their respective letters, the senators point to the two websites allegedly exploiting U.S. trade laws, undercutting American businesses, their alleged use of forced labor, compromising people’s data, and their strong backing by the Chinese Communist Party.
Temu, founded in 2022, has become the most downloaded app in the United States in 2024, with 51 million monthly active users in January, according to Rubio. The retailer sells everything from clothes to wallets to gadgets at a fraction of American retailer prices. It has spent millions on advertisements, including ads in the Super Bowl.
In his letter, Cotton alleges that the app is able to sell at such low prices due to government subsidies provided by the CCP and its utilization of forced labor from the Uyghur population, saying Temu “does not expressly prohibit third-party sellers from selling products based on their origin in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region,” or XUAR, the homeland of the Uyghurs.
China has been criticized for detaining over 1 million Uyghurs, a Muslim and Turkic-speaking ethnic group, in the Xinjiang region, where they are reportedly in reeducation camps. China has denied the claims of genocide and poor conditions.
Rubio called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to enforce the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was signed into law in late 2021 with the purpose of deterring the importation of items created by slave labor. Rubio notes his discouragement in seeing that the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, led by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, has yet to add a single entity to its UFLPA exporter list.
“Private firms and journalists have unearthed compelling evidence that both Shein and Temu are facilitating the entry of goods made with Ugyhur forced labor,” Rubio wrote. “A November 2022 Bloomberg investigation found that Shein garments were made with cotton from XUAR. A separate digital vetting platform found that Temu has offered for sale in the United States various items that were made or sold by businesses located in XUAR.”
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Both senators claimed Temu was taking advantage of duty-free and tax-free importation because its items shipped were under $800, with Temu accounting for 30% of all de minimis packages shipped to the United States. Such packages have “incomplete and unverifiable information,” according to Rubio, making it more difficult for Customs and Border Protection to “identify and interdict high-risk shipments.”
Temu and Shein have faced controversy before. New York fined Shein’s owner for the company’s mishandling of users’ personal information, and Temu’s parent company, Pinduoduo, was removed from Google’s app store after it was revealed harmful malware was present in versions of the app.
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