WeChat, China’s dominant social network, and online retail giant AliExpress for the first time join the US blacklist of companies “known” for selling counterfeits and infringing intellectual property rights, while removing the center Polvos Azules commercial, located in the center of Lima.
Last year, the United States listed “42 online trade groups and 35 physical ones that may be participating in or facilitating significant trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy,” said the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), headed by Katherine Tai.
The list, which the USTR has been publishing since 2011, includes for the first time AliExpress (Alibaba Group) and the WeChat messaging platform, “two major online business groups based in China,” it underlines in a statement.
The appearance in this list does not imply fines, but tarnishes the reputation of sites or countries that are pointed with the finger.
“China is the leading country of origin for counterfeit goods seized by US Customs and Border Protection,” the report’s authors noted.
In the report they denounce that the Asian giant produces “the highest number of goods manufactured using (illegal) forced labor, including forced labor organized by the State” and child labor.
“The global trade in counterfeit and pirated products undermines innovation and creativity in the United States and harms American workers,” Katherine Tai reacted, quoted in the entity’s statement.
This trade increases “the vulnerability of the workers involved” and the products can also carry risks to the health and safety of consumers, underlines the report, which mentions the protective equipment against COVID-19 “manufactured in non-sterile conditions, including clandestine workshops.
Also in China, online trading firms Baidu Wangpan, DHGate, Pinduoduo and Taobao remain blacklisted, as well as nine other physical markets.
Along with the sales of fraudulent perfumes and clothing in stores or clandestinely, the USTR highlights an “increasingly popular” tactic of using “hidden links” that connect to counterfeit product catalogs in image galleries or archives.
As for Latin American countries, compared to the last report, the USTR added Avenida Avellaneda, a place in Buenos Aires where “sales from street vendors or ‘manteros’ have increased significantly since mid-2021″.
On a more positive note, USTR delisted Ecuador’s Bahía Market, in Guayaquil, and Polvos Azules, in Lima, and highlights anti-counterfeiting efforts in Thailand, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Source: Gestion
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