Lawmakers Urge DHS to Blacklist Major Chinese Battery Companies

U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) speaks during hearings on the Trump administration's first budget on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 28, 2017. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

Five Republican lawmakers are calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to immediately blacklist two leading Chinese battery companies, on the basis that their supply chains are “deeply compromised” by the communist regime’s state-sponsored slave labor and Uyghur genocide.

Led by Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the lawmakers sent two separate letters to Robert Silvers, DHS under secretary for strategy, policy, and plans, on June 5. They asked that the agency immediately put the Chinese firms CATL and Gotion High-Tech on an entity list created out of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA).

“The Select Committee has uncovered indisputable evidence that Gotion High Tech and CATL have supply chains that are deeply connected to forced labor and the ongoing genocide of Uyghurs in China,” Mr. Moolenaar said in a June 6 statement.

He called for the DHS to “block the shipments of these companies from entering the United States.”

“The American people expect companies in the U.S. to avoid all involvement with the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign of genocide,” Mr. Moolenaar said.

Gotion High Tech’s U.S. subsidiary, Gotion Inc., is developing battery plants in Michigan and Illinois. Additionally, Ford is building a new electric vehicle plant in Michigan, and the site is set to produce batteries using technologies licensed from CATL.

The lawmakers said CATL sources anode materials for lithium-ion batteries from a company controlled by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a regional paramilitary force under the CCP. In 2020, the Trump administration sanctioned the XPCC for being directly involved in human rights abuses in China’s far-western Xinjiang region.

CATL also sources electrolytic nickel, another key ingredient for making lithium batteries, from a subsidiary of China’s state-owned Xinjiang Nonferrous, according to the lawmakers.

Xinjiang Nonferrous “operates the largest copper mine deposits in the [Xinjiang] and is a prolific user of Uyghur forced labor,” the lawmakers state. “Xinjiang Nonferrous has also forced Uyghurs to share their homes with Han officials for surveillance and indoctrination and moved Uyghurs into involuntary work at satellite factories and remote mine sites under the guise of ‘poverty alleviation’ and anti-extremism ‘training’ programs.”

Gotion also buys aluminum foil from a subsidiary of Xinjiang Nonferrous, the lawmakers noted.

“Gotion sources material from Xinjiang Joinworld, a company that participated in ‘poverty alleviation through labor transfer.’ These programs are often a disguise for forced labor,” the press release reads. “Gotion sources lithium-ion and other materials from companies with deep connections to XPCC.”

The two letters identified other problematic companies to which CATL and Gotion are affiliated.

Should DHS officials decide against placing CATL and Gotion High-Tech on the entity list, the lawmakers said they will request a briefing with DHS officials.

The four other signatories of the letters are Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), House Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), and Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.).

“It’s clear CATL and Gotion are tied to Uyghur slave labor. We must prevent these battery companies from accessing our market,” Mr. Rubio stated in a post on X on June 7.

On June 6, Mr. Rubio and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Reauthorization Act of 2024, which would reauthorize the critical aspect of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 for another five years. The 2020 Act, which became law in June 2020, allows U.S. sanctions to be imposed on foreign individuals and entities involved in human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The U.S. government first designated the CCP’s repression in Xinjiang as “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” in 2021.

The Chinese regime has used “combating extremism” as a pretext to lock up more than 1 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, where detainees are subjected to forced labor, torture, political indoctrination, forced abortion, and other inhuman treatments in Chinese internment camps.

The Epoch Times has contacted CATL and Gotion for comment but has not received a response as of press time.