Yoko Kubota of The Wall Street Journal reports that the lack of supplies of a part produced by a Chinese supplier recently banned over links to forced labor is delaying imports of Porsche and other cars into the U.S. Kubota writes:
A commonly used magnetic component made by a blacklisted Chinese company is behind the hold up of thousands of luxury-car shipments to the U.S., illustrating how American trade policy is upending global supply chains.
The part, a LAN transformer used to connect cars and computers to networks, was inside a control system of vehicles being shipped by Volkswagen to the U.S. from Europe and Mexico.
The tiny part was made by a company called Sichuan Jingweida Technology, a person familiar with the matter said, which in December was added by the Department of Homeland Security to the U.S. entity list over its alleged use of forced labor in China. […]
John Foote, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who heads the customs practice at Kelley Drye & Warren, said the case shows Volkswagen took compliance with the forced-labor act seriously.
“It took a massively commercially disruptive step out of a clear sense of obligation to comply with U.S. law,” he said.
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