OPINION:
Late last year, Amazon launched Amazon Haul, a fast-fashion-style storefront offering inexpensive clothes, accessories and home goods and meant to compete with wildly popular platforms such as Shein and Temu. The site curates viral, TikTok-friendly products at low prices in a clear attempt to capture the same young consumers who have made those Chinese platforms household names.
However, the launch also puts Amazon squarely in a market segment that has become synonymous with labor rights concerns. As the online retail giant expands its footprint in the ultrafast fashion world, the company must demonstrate how it will avoid the labor abuses and supply chain opacity looming over its competitors.
Shein and Temu are under growing scrutiny for their supply chains and suspected use of forced labor. A 2023 report by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found that Temu “does not maintain even the facade of a meaningful compliance program” and is “at high risk” of sourcing goods made with forced labor.
Shein was the subject of a blistering British parliamentary hearing last year in which executives dodged direct questions about whether their cotton came from Xinjiang, a region where the Chinese government has reportedly detained more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims and subjected many to forced labor.
Amazon has long positioned itself as a trusted platform for American consumers and touted its Supplier Code of Conduct and human rights principles. Still, the company has yet to explain how it will vet the sellers and brands promoted on its Haul storefront.
That is concerning, particularly given reports surfacing in 2020 alleging that Amazon had worked with suppliers tied to forced labor in China. According to an investigation by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, several of Amazon’s suppliers, including electronics manufacturers and apparel makers, were connected to government-run labor transfer programs in Xinjiang.
This isn’t just about Amazon. It’s about what kind of information American consumers deserve in an era of globalized commerce. People rightly want to know where their products come from and whether anyone was exploited. A survey produced by the Avery Dennison Corp. found that a significant portion of consumers would switch brands or pay a premium for products from companies that can verify ethical sourcing.
Yet meaningful transparency is still elusive across much of the e-commerce landscape.
Congress took a step in the right direction with the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which bans the import of goods made wholly or partly in Xinjiang unless companies can prove otherwise. However, enforcement remains challenging, and without stronger traceability requirements, companies such as Shein, Temu and now Amazon can continue to benefit from a system that keeps consumers in the dark.
It’s not enough for Amazon to point to general supplier guidelines. If the company is going to position itself as an alternative to Shein and Temu, it must embrace the transparency those competitors lack. That means disclosing where products are made, who makes them and how Amazon verifies compliance with its labor standards.
If Amazon can’t or won’t provide those assurances, lawmakers should step in and expand existing legislation to require that all major online retailers based in Seattle or Shanghai provide detailed supply chain disclosures for high-risk categories such as apparel and electronics.
There’s no reason one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated logistics companies cannot tell its customers where their Haul purchase came from or whether it was made ethically. Amazon has the scale, the influence and the resources to lead on this issue. Instead, it’s choosing silence.
Ethical sourcing isn’t a luxury; it’s a baseline expectation. If Amazon wants to play in the fast-fashion arena, it must answer the same questions we’ve already asked Shein and Temu: Who made this, under what conditions and how do you know?
• John Burnett is the managing director and founder of 1 Empire Group, a business management consulting company. He is an adjunct assistant professor at New York University.
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