The Senate Finance Committee said it’s going to look deeper into BMW for using banned parts from China in cars it imports to the US. This comes after a staff investigation found that BMW brought in at least 8,000 Mini Cooper cars with these banned parts from the Xinjiang region of China, where forced labor is believed to be used.
We’re not sure how the investigation will go or how much BMW will cooperate. They haven’t said anything about it yet, but they’ll likely try to fix the problem because it’s been getting a lot of bad attention.
What happened was, the US government made a law in 2021 to stop products made with forced labor in China from coming into the US. But it left it up to companies to make sure their supply chains followed the rules. Someone told the government that car companies were still using these parts, and Senator Ron Wyden talked about it last month.
Volkswagen, BMW, Volvo, and JLR all got parts from a US company called Bourns, Inc., which got them from a Chinese company called JWD. The carmakers first said they didn’t use these parts, but later admitted they did.
BMW got hit the hardest. The Senator asked if they’re sure they’re not still using these parts, and they have to answer by June 21st. They also have to say what they’re doing to fix it and make sure it doesn’t happen again. We don’t know yet what will happen if they don’t fix it, but they might have to pay fines.
This seems to only affect Mini cars, so if you have a BMW 3 Series, you’re probably okay. But we don’t know what will happen next. The government might start banning more Chinese parts and cars, so car companies need to be really careful about where they get their parts from.
