US lawmakers ask Biden to make travel easier from Taiwan

Bloomberg

A group of nine lawmakers asked the Biden administration to establish a facility to expedite travel to the US from Taiwan’s main international airport, a show of support for the island amid fear it could be targeted by an increasingly aggressive China.
The group of seven Republicans and two Democrats said in a letter that a pre-clearance facility at Taoyuan International Airport “would improve the ease of travel between the United States and Taiwan and reinforce the importance of our relationship with Taiwan.”
The airport “already hosts numerous non-stop flights to the United States, and is a major transit point in Asia,” the lawmakers wrote to Troy Miller, the senior official performing the duties of the commissioner for US Customs and Border Protection.
“Taiwan is America’s ninth-largest trading partner and its government strongly supports Taoyuan airport’s bid for the pre-clearance facility program,” they added. Among those who signed the letter were Republican Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida, Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan and Republican Representative Jim Banks of Indiana.
Pre-clearance facilities put US customs agents in a traveller’s starting country to make entry into the US go more smoothly. Former acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said in a speech in December that Taiwan had made the request, and a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said that the administration is still evaluating Taiwan’s request.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have focused on Taiwan as a potential flashpoint as tension heats up with China, which claims full sovereignty over the island.
In a Senate hearing this week, Admiral John Aquilino, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the US Indo-Pacific Command, said the “most dangerous concern” is the potential use of military force against Taiwan.

US says, China targeting
companies that bar
Xinjiang cotton
The US accused China of a state-run social media campaign and boycott against companies that refuse to use cotton from the Xinjiang region over concern the crop is produced with forced labour by Muslim-minority Uyghurs.
China has targeted American, European and Japanese businesses that are avoiding Xinjiang cotton, State Department deputy spokeswoman Jalina Porter told reporters in a briefing. She said that amounts to a state-run
“corporate and consumer boycott.”
“We support and encourage businesses to respect human rights in line with the UN guiding principles on business and human rights,” she said.
The statement was part of a broader effort to call out China and highlight allegations of forced labour and other abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The US says the Chinese government has detained more than 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in “re-education” internment camps, allegations that Beijing denies.
Former President Donald Trump’s administration said China’s crackdown in Xinjiang amounted to genocide, a conclusion that current Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he agreed with.
In January, the US began barring entry of all cotton products and tomatoes from Xinjiang. The order also applies to products manufactured in other countries that use cotton and tomatoes from the region.
The AFL-CIO, the largest US labour organisation, has demanded that President Joe Biden also block imports of solar products containing the metal polysilicon from Xinjiang on the grounds that it may involve forced labour.