Lawmakers Say NBA Players Are Profiting From ‘Slave Labor’ in China
Some Republicans are demanding that NBA players sever endorsement contracts with Anta and Li-Ning, the Chinese sportswear firms whose cotton supply chains are implicated in forced labor in China’s Xinjiang province.
In other words, NBA players are still profiting from slave labor in China.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn) told POLITICO that “Americans can’t and shouldn’t conduct business with companies and players that profit through human slavery. And that includes NBA players — they can’t sign endorsement deals and benefit off slave labor.”
In January, the Trump administration banned imports of Xinjiang cotton.
In addition, the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China is also probing NBA players to end terms with Anta and Li-Ning.
"Senate’s July 15 passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act will likely only intensify sensitivity in Congress to firms with supply chains linked to forced labor in Xinjiang," POLITICO adds.
Jimmy Butler, CJ McCollum, and Klay Thompson are among the players who have lucrative contracts with Li-Ning or Anta. Moreover, Dwyane Wade, who claims to put human rights before his bottom line, signed a lifetime endorsement deal with Li-Ning in 2018.
POLITICO says neither Wade nor 13 current NBA players with Li-Ning or Anta endorsements responded to requests for comment. Stunning.
Rep. Perry makes a good point, adding, "if they didn’t know sourced slave labor cotton from Xinjiang, that’s one thing. But if they do know, they are complicit with slavery.”
NBA players have been aware of Xinjiang's use of forced labor. This isn't new. Unsurprisingly, they've done nothing about it. And unless they are forced to, no one expects these hypocrites to act in good faith. Furthermore, there are concerns among other GOP lawmakers that the NBA's relationship with Li-Ning or Anta will simply continue as Congress is not able to tell the players to end these deals.
“I am not aware of any legislative tool that could be used to compel athletes to speak up or sever those relationships under existing law,” said John Grady, a sports law professor at the University of South Carolina, is quoted saying.
OutKick's Clay Travis wrote about NBA players who profit off slave labor earlier this year:
Now here’s the real question: will the NBA media, which functions mostly as cheerleaders for the league, actually continue to press the league and the players on this massive hypocrisy, or will the league continue to shut up and dribble for China with barely a hint of criticism? And could NBA commissioner Adam Silver actually own up to the league’s expressed ideals and ban the use of slave labor products during games, potentially angering his Chinese bosses?
Ha, I think you know how this plays out.
The NBA will keep right on taking money from modern day Nazis running actual Muslim slave labor cotton plantations, and the NBA will keep right on bowing for their Chinese masters.
It’s pathetic, but it’s reality.