The bill is simple. It bars the importation or the sale of goods made with sweatshop labor. In other words, if a product is made in a Chinese sweatshop, if a product is made by child labor or slave labor or prison labor, you can't import it into the United States, you can't sell it into the United States
 
The Federal Trade Commission would enforce it, but the bill also gives retailers and shareholders the right to hold violators accountable, and it prohibits Federal government agencies from buying sweatshop goods. We can't afford to continue to tolerate these abuses. We certainly cannot afford, cannot continue to encourage them.
 
We don't have a $200 billion trade deficit with China because China's companies are better than ours and certainly not because their people are smarter or more dedicated or hard working. We know how China is able to do so well in the game of international trade. They break the rules. - House Floor, Jun 27 2006〔Congressionial Record, House, Jun 27 2006〕

China is the world's sweatshop leader, with repressive labor policies resulting in wage suppression of as much as 85 percent. We all know that American workers can compete in a global economy on a level playing field, but no one can compete with prison labor, child labor or sweatshop labor. The result, a U.S. trade deficit with China that breaks records year after year, an increasing loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China. In my State alone, in Ohio, 42,000 jobs have been lost to China since the year 2001. Much of that job loss has been as a result of China's unfair trade practices. Yet America's trade agreements are actually encouraging the development of new sweatshops....
 
The bill bars the importation, the exportation or the sale of goods made with prisoner sweatshop labor. In other words, if a product is made by child labor or by forced prison camp labor, you can't import it into the United States, you can't sell it in the United States....
 
We cannot afford to continue to turn a blind eye to these abuses. Sweatshop imports are a moral crime. They violate the values of our families, of our faith and of the history of this country. They are a moral crime against the working men and women, and, I am afraid, working children of the developing nations.
 
Sweatshop imports are economic suicide for our country. As we import sweatshop goods, we export American jobs, we weaken the bargaining position of U.S. workers fighting for wages with which they can actually support their families.
 
The heart of America's economy has always been a vigorous middle-income consumer class. Henry Ford knew that. That is why he paid his workers a wage that would allow them to buy the cars that they made, to share the wealth they create, to buy the cars that they made.
 
By driving U.S. wages down, we weaken the American consumer market, we undercut our greatest economic power, and we lose jobs in so many of our communities....〔Congressional Record, House, Jun 22 2006〕