The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on 19 Aug 2025 that it is adding steel, copper, lithium, caustic soda and red dates to the high-priority enforcement list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The decision subjects imports of those products, especially from China’s Xinjiang region, to automatic detention unless importers can provide clear evidence they were not produced with forced labour. Customs and Border Protection has already detained more than 16,700 shipments valued at almost $3.7 billion since the law came into force in mid-2024, and has denied entry to over 10,000 of them. The expanded list widens scrutiny of supply chains for critical minerals used in batteries and renewable-energy technologies, industries in which China remains the dominant global supplier. “The use of slave labor is repulsive and we will hold Chinese companies accountable,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement, describing the crackdown as both an economic and national-security imperative. The move follows bipartisan pressure on the Trump administration to curb reliance on Chinese materials and tighten human-rights enforcement. U.S. lawmakers are simultaneously pushing to increase domestic output of critical minerals. A new academic study suggests that reprocessing waste from existing mines could cover most of the nation’s needs without opening new pits, while Representative Young Kim this week highlighted efforts to scale production at California’s Mountain Pass rare-earth facility.