Kevin Wolf Quoted in Solar Builder Magazine on Combatting Forced Labor in Polysilicon

Akin Gump international trade partner Kevin Wolf has been quoted in the Solar Builder Magazine article “Consider the source part 1: The fight against forced labor in polysilicon.” The article reports on recent enforcement actions taken by the United States against polysilicon from the Xinjiang region of China.

As the article notes, one of the actions taken was publishing a Federal Register Notice updating the Department of Labor’s “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor” to include polysilicon produced with forced labor in China. This was notable, the article says, because it came on its own, outside the standard two-year cycle for updating the list.

According to Solar Builder, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) then added several Chinese companies to its Entity List, though the article points out this is the least consequential of the actions since it deals with the export of materials from the United States, rather than imports.

Speaking at a recent panel organized by the Solar Energy Industries Association about the Entity List designation, Wolf, a BIS official in the Obama administration, said, “It’s a list that will evolve a lot. I think you’ll see more controls on end uses that have a human rights focus even if the underlying technology is not listed.”