FOOTWEAR

With the Covid-19 pandemic ravaging the world economy, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics reveal that the value-added of China’s footwear manufacturing in 2020 was down 12.8% year-on-year. Compared to 2019, China produced two billion fewer pairs of shoes in 2020. In terms of global market share, China’s footwear output was 1 percentage point down from that of 2019. More

Six U.S. government agencies on 13 July issued an updated advisory for U.S. businesses whose supply chains run through mainland China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This document updates advice originally provided in a 1 July 2020 interagency memo and more emphatically enjoins the business community to avoid forced labour in their supply chains. More

The Covid pandemic has driven the development of e-commerce at an even more breakneck speed than before. The UK is the world’s third-largest e-commerce market and has been the transit station for e-commerce goods from Hong Kong entering the EU single market. After Brexit, however, the customs clearance procedures and other rules businesses have to follow will inevitably become more complicated. More