The cotton situation has so many threads (sorry) that to pursue any one of them is an extended work in itself. First, Social Accountability (SA) has come home to roost. Almost all Western consumer goods companies operate under some version of SA that prohibit forced labor, dictate working conditions and wages and a host of other points. If the SA codes have any validity more companies will have to cut ties to Xinjiang. Last I knew Hugo Boss was buying from Esquel which was specifically mentioned in the US government complaint.

Second, "decoupling". If this continues the decoupling will be not just of tech, but on consumer goods. The action against H&M seems an extra-legal violation of market access rules. As noted already, the EU-China investment deal seems DOA, but is China's membership in the WTO in question as well?

Third, while nationalism is nothing new in China, this latest seems one further step in China disassociating itself from the international system that transformed the country. The slipping of the wings of Hainan and other would be Chinese MNC's and the apparent effort now to exclude foreign companies from the domestic market suggest a return to the isolation of the 1960's.