Senate Republicans call for investigation into the Temu app

Two Senate Republicans are urging the Biden administration to investigate Temu, an online marketplace owned by a Chinese parent company.

Both Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) wrote letters to the Biden administration expressing their concern about Temu and alleged that he has ties to forced labor and intellectual property theft.

Letter from Cotton, dated Monday and the first reported by National Reviewurges President Biden “to investigate Temu and request the necessary authorities to protect Americans from this dangerous Chinese application.”

“Temu’s products are cheap not because of fair competition, but rather because of China’s well-known combination of intellectual property theft, government subsidies and human rights violations,” Cotton’s letter says.

“For example, Temu directly copies Amazon storefronts and then sells counterfeit Chinese versions of the product at deep discounts. Temu probably also benefits from the use of slave labor.”

Rubio’s letter, dated Tuesday, asks Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to investigate Temu to “for violating my Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) and adding them to the UFLPA Entity List if you find that they violate that law.”

The UFLPA prohibits the import of goods produced through forced labor by Uyghur ethnic minorities in a region of China.

UFLPA co-sponsor Rubio said Temu “lacks even a basic compliance or audit system to ensure its products comply with the UFLPA and has an unenforced code of conduct that prohibits the use of forced labor.” .

“In fact, the company admitted that it ‘does not expressly prohibit third-party sellers from selling products based on their origin in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region,’” Rubio continued in his letter.

The Hill has reached out to the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and Temu for comment.