"We have reasonable but not conclusive evidence that there is a risk of forced labor in supply chains related to cotton textiles and tomatoes coming out of Xinj

"We have reasonable but not conclusive evidence that there is a risk of forced labor in supply chains related to cotton textiles and tomatoes coming out of Xinjiang,” Smith said in an interview. “We will continue to work our investigations to fill in those gaps.” Xinjiang produces 20% of the world's cotton. The reality is, most farmers in Xinjiang are independent entities. They are the little guys. They grow cotton or any other produces on their land, and sell the produces to distributors. Many of these farmers are minority ethnicity, Uighur included, but there are others as well. These people lived in villages and in the country side for generations. Farming and the "primary" sector of the economy is how they make a living for generations. They are the low to middle income bracket of the society. They depend on agriculture to raise families, provide food on the table, raise children, and take care of the elderly in the family. A blanket ban of all cotton produced in this region will devastate the life of these people. Think about it from the perspective of these people. They grew cotton on their farm, and one day they are told "The U.S. stops buying your product because they want to protect you from forced labor", and because of that, you will be out of work. The farmer sits there and think "Wait, I am farming because I need money to feed my families". This ban sounds like its standing with the Uighur people, but in reality, it hurts them the most. Rights to live, rights to livelihood, rights to income and bringing food to the table is also human rights. Target companies or organizations that actually committed forced labor and present concrete evidence. Maybe require a document of the name of the farmer, require disclosure and certifications of the practices of the producers. There are many ways this could be done to both protect legitimate producers, farmers, and rule out the bad actors. Or at least act like you are trying. A blanket ban blew the covers off of the PR statement this is about protecting human rights and stand with the people. Instead, the actual intent is to suppress the Chinese economy, and prevent the people living there from getting richer and achieve a better quality of life. Its sad that there are people in the world who don't really care about other people's quality of life. They can enjoy themselves a good paying job, nice cloths, good cars etc. While for other people, farming, doing hard, manual and labor intensive work on the farm is all they can ever dream of. And what little they have now will be "taken" away from them.