Mullins Examines How to End Forced Labor Overseas
Posted Feb 16, 2026
Katie Mullins used her senior thesis to examine how the United States can use economic leverage to prevent forced labor and protect human rights.
Mullins assumes that Americans oppose forced labor and would not buy products that are made with forced labor. However, few people know whether forced labor was used to make their goods. And very few companies will advertise that they use it. Instead, most companies claim not to know whether it is used. So, is there a way to make companies pay more attention to where their products come from?
Her paper relies on deterrence theory, as laws can raise the costs of companies to a level where they would seek to end forced labor. Deterrence usually rests on three C’s: credibility, capability, and cost. Credibility is the idea that the threat is realistic, so the company would have an incentive to avoid the costs imposed for using forced labor. Capability involves how feasible it is to impose the costs. Costs refer to how high or low the pain is for violating the rules.
She identified several possible solutions to ending forced labor. First, the US could ban companies from outsourcing labor to use forced labor of any kind. The problem is that most nations have laws that already ban forced labor. However, they do not enforce the laws. By claiming it is banned, the nation can claim it meets the goal, even when it does not.
Second, the US could force any U.S. company to produce products in nations that use labor laws comparable to those in the U.S. The problem here is the same as above in enforcement costs. For a country to meet U.S. labor laws would raise the costs of business in its country by a tremendous amount and would retard its growth. Thus, nations would pass strict labor laws but never enforce them.
Third, the U.S. could pass a law like the recent EU law that prohibits any product made with forced labor from entering or leaving the EU market. By preventing companies from selling these products, it produces sufficient incentive for companies to stop selling them. Moreover, the companies themselves are responsible for ensuring that forced labor is not used in anything they use to make products. If the company cannot provide the necessary documentation, the product cannot enter the nation.
Favoring the latter approach, she began to examine how to implement this law. Studies show that bills with strong public support are likely to pass, and this bill would have high support. Since the Midwest is the swing region in presidential elections and has lost many jobs to outsourcing, Republicans, who are usually opposed to business regulation, have strong incentives to support this bill. President Trump’s focus on economic nationalism and decoupling from China, a major user of forced labor, reinforces this concern.