As war breaks out in Europe, all eyes have turned to President Biden. Will he sanction the Russian oligarchs responsible for the policy behind the Ukraine invasion? Will he freeze their financial accounts, kick their children out of our schools?
President Biden’s reluctance to take an early and strong position on sanctioning Russian leaders and assets stands in stark contrast to his administration’s increasing efforts to ban a wide range of foreign products for various policy reasons. Prior to being confronted by the possibility of violent warfare, the Biden administration was pursuing a trigger-happy sanctions policy.
To date, our president has banned over 60 products because of evidence of forced labor associated with their production–spanning from specific facilities to entire regions. Most Americans cheer on these bans. Who wants to be on the side of forced labor? Plus, who’s going to miss apparel clothing from a Mongolian company called Dong Fang Gou Ji? Or video games and connector plugs produced in a Japanese prison?
Recently, many Americans supported a ban on cotton produced in the Xinjiang region in China. When it announced that ban, the administration simultaneously revealed numerous reports of the harrowing human rights atrocities taking place against the Uyghur Muslims, including women and children, in the region. While we may love our cotton products, Americans take pride in sticking up for the types of liberties denied to the Uyghurs–and supporting anything “Made in China” these days tends to push our buttons.
After Xinjiang cotton, came the infamous Mexican avocado ban. The Biden administration is still reeling from America’s strong opposition to it.
Earlier this month, the government temporarily banned avocados from Mexico based on allegations that a U.S. inspector was threatened at a Mexican facility. American aficionados of avocado toast and Superbowl guacamole were confused and concerned about avocado supply and pricing.
Those concerns may pale in comparison to ongoing events overseas. However, American consumers have already been beaten down by inflation and high grocery prices. We’ve not had a lot to celebrate, and the Biden administration’s ban on avocados was a significant setback. It meant yet one more beloved item would go missing from the ever-sparse grocery shelves. One less item on the brunch menu. Cilantro and lime with no guacamole base.
Rather than supplement its ban with informative human rights reports, as it did for the Xinjiang cotton ban, the administration vaguely waived in the direction of organized crime syndicates and let our imaginations do the rest. Who was the U.S. agent, who threatened him, and why were U.S. inspectors traipsing through Mexican factories in the first place? It was difficult to feel sympathy and outrage over an unknown, singular event. The administration’s paltry justification failed to raise humanitarian concerns or elicit our zeal for liberty.
When the Mexican government officials responded to the ban by accusing President Biden of playing politics, none of us had enough information to weigh in. Since the negotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, U.S. inspectors are increasingly visiting Mexican factories and these types of diplomatic spats, unsurprisingly, seem to be growing more frequent. Some of the allegations lodged by Mexican officials–including the mistreatment of Mexican women working in U.S. agricultural facilities–have raised reasonable doubts about the administration’s objectives and their legitimacy.
Perhaps because of the public backlash, the administration retracted its ban as quickly and mysteriously as it had implemented it. Americans had defied the administration’s expectations: We proved not to be the agreeable and supportive consumer base that the administration had predicted.
And the administration has still, apparently, not recovered.
The president now stands at the precipice of war. The U.S. sanctions toolbox lies at his fingertips, but his administration has become cautious. Some may argue, too cautious. Media clips of crying babies and bloodied mothers have quickly shifted our thoughts away from Superbowl Sunday to critical human suffering overseas.
So where do we go from here? American consumers care about global welfare and civil liberties. We support the use of bans against Chinese and Russian leaders to protect fundamental human rights.
President Biden should draw lessons from these recent developments and act quickly. In doing so, his administration needs to provide enough information so that Americans can know what, exactly, we are paying and fighting for.
Desirée LeClercq is the Proskauer Employment and Labor Law Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Prior to joining the law faculty at Cornell, she worked as a director for labor affairs at the United States Trade Representative, as a legal officer at the International Labor Organization, and as a staff attorney for the Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. Her views are her own.
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