Wyden Presses BMW on Why It Took Months to Respond to UFLPA Notification

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore. asked BMW to come clean after what he characterized as "shifting explanations" about its use of components made by a company added to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list.

Those explanations were given to his committee staffers as they investigated the presence of Uyghur forced labor in auto supply chains (see 2405200009). The staffers produced a report that said the sector's failure to identify companies in their supply chains that hire Uyghur workers makes it complicit in the abuse.

"The failure of two major automakers to discover that a company identified as using forced labor by multiple NGO reports and that had been added to the UFLPA Entity List was one of their tier 3 suppliers, even after being informed of this fact in writing by a tier 1 supplier, demonstrates that existing due diligence regimes are not sufficient to detect exposure to forced labor in automotive supply chains," the report said.

In a letter made public on June 10, Wyden asked if BMW is certain it is no longer importing vehicles containing components made by Sichuan Jingweida Technology Group Co., Ltd. (JWD). He asked if the company had completed its internal investigation into whether there were more cars, aside from the 8,000 Mini Coopers it previously disclosed, that contained JWD components -- and if that investigation is not done, when they expect to be.

He asked BMW to disclose what other cars, in what quantities, with JWD components it imported after Dec. 11, 2023, when JWD was added to the entity list. He also asked the company to disclose the volume of those imports, including spare parts with the JWD components, by the week the goods entered.

The letter noted that Lear told BMW on Jan. 11 that LAN transformers it sold to BMW included components made by JWD, and that JWD was on the entity list. "Please explain what action BMW took when it received this notification," Wyden wrote. He also asked for a copy of the communication from Lear. It was public knowledge that JWD would be banned starting Dec. 11 when a pre-publication notice was published Dec. 8, but if BMW didn't know at that time that Lear, its direct supplier, bought from a company that subcontracted with JWD, that would not have rung alarm bells.

"BMW continued importing vehicles containing these JWD components for months," the letter said, and noted that BMW told Senate Finance Committee staffers that it began stopping imports of cars with those components on April 5. "Was April 5, 2024 the date on which BMW became aware that it was importing vehicles containing components made by JWD? If not, please identify the date on which BMW became aware that it was importing vehicles containing components made by JWD. Please describe, fully and in detail, how BMW became aware on that date that it was importing vehicles containing components made by JWD," the letter said.

BMW and Mini representatives didn't respond to queries by press time.