Johnson, Jackley shares concerns with Temu

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO/AP) — South Dakota’s only member of the House of Representatives in Washington is expressing concerns about online retailers Temu and Shein.

“What we know from the reports that our select committee on China did, is that these enterprises use slave labor. And they do a terrible job of trying to keep slave labor out of their supply chains,” Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson said Friday. “This is well-documented.”

Johnson, who sits on the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, traces a link through that party to forced labor and eventually to online retailers an American might visit.

“The Chinese Communist Party is running these forced labor camps, they are making that labor available to vendors who get this, these items to Shein, to Temu, who then turn around and sell it to American consumers,” Johnson said.

Johnson also brings up the Uyghur people; both the Biden and Trump administrations have accused China of genocide against the ethnic group.

“At the select committee on China, we have heard people who have escaped Uyghur concentration camps, forced labor camps, and they have asked Americans not to give money to the Chinese Communist Party and their partners who are using that slave labor to make a buck,” Johnson said.

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“The attorney generals became concerned after the congressional hearings that Temu, which is essentially a platform much like Amazon, was gathering Americans’ personal information, providing that to others including communist China for profit, and we were also concerned that many of those products were a result of forced labor,” South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley said Friday.

For his part, Jackley has signed on to a letter to Temu’s president seeking information about consumer data and slave labor.

“The attorney generals stepped in and indicated we would like answers to both: are you gathering data on our citizens, if you are, what are you doing with that data, and what are you doing to protect against slave labor,” Jackley said.