The US banned Top Glove's gloves over forced labor — at the peak of demand

Top Glove Corporation Bhd, based in Malaysia, is the world's largest maker of disposable gloves, and the pandemic made its product one of the most in-demand on earth. But the labour that produced it drew regulatory scrutiny in the United States. In July 2020, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a Withhold Release Order on Top Glove's disposable gloves, blocking them at the border on the suspicion that they were made with forced labour.

The action escalated. On 29 March 2021 CBP published a formal forced-labour finding, in the Customs Bulletin and the Federal Register, and directed its officers at every US port of entry to begin seizing disposable gloves produced by Top Glove in Malaysia. CBP said it had sufficient information to believe the company used forced labour, citing debt bondage, excessive overtime, abusive working and living conditions, and the retention of workers' identity documents.

The timing could hardly have been worse for the company: the ban cut off its biggest export market at the moment global demand for gloves was at its peak. Top Glove then spent months remediating the conditions CBP had identified. In September 2021 CBP modified the finding — the first such finding modified in 27 years — after determining the gloves were no longer produced with prohibited labour.

The case is a supply-chain lesson with a date on it: a low-cost labour model built on workers' debt was treated as a cost advantage right up until a regulator priced it as a liability, and the bill arrived precisely when the market was richest.