Treaty-Backed Due Diligence Governance

UFLPA’s Travelling Enforcement and Strategic Agency in Malaysia and Vietnam

Abstract

This article examines a new form of transnational labour and supply-chain governance. It argues that transnational U.S. forced-labour governance, especially Section 307 and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), has evolved from unilateral border enforcement into treaty-backed travelling due diligence governance: a form of indirect governance that travels through international supply chains and economic interconnectivity to reshape labour governance in Southeast Asia. Moving beyond accounts that portray Southeast Asian states as passive recipients, the article shows how governments become rule-shaping agents that embed U.S.-style due diligence into domestic law and industrial policy, and use external pressure to improve domestic governance capabilities. The study combines comparative process-tracing of Malaysia and Vietnam with (i) textual analysis of trade agreements, national action plans, customs/labour cooperation instruments, and selected corporate disclosures; and (ii) event-style evidence around U.S. Customs and Border Protection interceptions in high-exposure sectors, including gloves, palm oil, apparel, electronics, and solar. We advance the concept of treaty-backed travelling due diligence governance, in which forced-labour risk is translated into market-access pressure, contractualisation, and capacity building. Findings reveal divergent adaptation paths. Malaysia follows an enforcement-to-remediation trajectory: Withhold Release Orders (WROs) and UFLPA actions trigger firm-level audits and remediation funds, then scale into a public compliance infrastructure anchored in a national forced-labour action plan. Vietnam pursues a treaty-alignment trajectory: labour commitments under the EU–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) are paired with supply-chain risk reconfiguration to pre-empt UFLPA frictions. Across the two cases, greater export exposure in high-priority UFLPA sectors is associated with earlier and stronger adoption of forced-labour and due-diligence measures.