Tyler Merritt: How Mayorkas enabled Chinese slave labor

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Stream Paper Write now and help close the gap. It's come to my attention that a veteran owned company called Nine Line Apparel, which prides itself on ethically sourced products, recently decided to trust but verify their supplier certifications that the cotton they were using originated in Central America rather than in China. So they had their supposedly clean textile imports professionally tested. Turned out that slave produced fabric from China was mixed in and passed off as Central American cotton. Nine Line Apparel did the right thing, got rid of all that material, and they reported it to Customs and Border Protection, offering to give them all the evidence they needed from their professional testing facility. But unfortunately, CBP decided not to follow up. They directed Nine Line Apparel to submit a complaint to a generic email box, which was not replied to. When Nine Line Apparel CEO then followed up by calling CBP directly, CBP told him that enforcing this act, this act's ban on slave produced textiles and other fabric is not one of their top priorities. Is that acceptable to you? It isn't a Tyler Merritt, my next guest. He's Nine Line CEO and Army captain now retired. Tyler, welcome back.

Congratulations to the success of your business. But this really got under your skin, obviously, right? Oh, no, it definitely did. And more now than ever, it's realized that Slave Cotton Joe and DHS Secretary Merrick is, they've got to go. Right. So, I mean, the Uyghurs are enslaved. People just accept that for some reason. They're because of their religion and they're Muslim.

By the way, it doesn't seem to bother Saudi Arabia or anybody else. And they're forced to do this stuff that's not okay with you. And then when you inform them, why do you think they're not following through?

Well, it's profits before all. I've had to spend the better part of the last year dealing with lawyers and lobbyists that I never thought I'd ever have to implore. But I get demand letters from Jones Day representing some very, very powerful organizations that just attempted to stop me from saying their name for almost a year.

Almost successfully saying that I was being liable and slanderous and causing undue pain in their company. And what I'm trying to say is that there's a right way to do things and there's a clear wrong way. And I'm all about the gray area.

I spent a good amount of my time in special operations living in the gray. But these individuals are taking products, relabeling them, making South America and just flooding the market. And everyone who's buying these blank products for their church groups and their school groups who think they're supporting our friends in Central and South America, they're not. They're helping China bolster their profits and they're keeping people enslaved. We are the demand and they're going to continue to grow the supply by enslaving more Uyghurs and growing the slave population and it's big business.

So we fought a civil war over owning humans here in the United States. They have four million of them, upwards of four million humans that they don't pay. How do you compete with that? I've got U.S. manufacturers here in Savannah, Georgia, 300 awesome, hardworking humans. I can't compete with slave labor and no one can. Unless we enforce these laws, companies like mine will continue to feel the pain and countries like China will continue to bolster their profits. So Tyler, when you bring this up, not only are you doing the patriotic thing, you're also doing the thing for business. Why do you think, does China pay for these expensive lobbyist firms to the point where they're more powerful than Americans? I think what people have to realize is that all of your favorite brands are somehow dependent in China one way or another. From the phones that we talk to, the vehicles we drive to, the things we wear, the sheens of the world who are producing apparel items landed in your door for less than five dollars.

When a blank shirt made here in the United States will cost me at least five dollars starting off. So I think people are not voting with their dollars because they're not educated. And unfortunately right now we live in a society where people want to be entertained, not educated. So unless you can make it entertaining and find that spin, you lose people's attention in a very short period of time.

So that's what's happened with me over the last year. One, trying to get an audience on a national stage is almost impossible. No one wants this to become national news because your major retailers, distributors, online giants, everyone is dependent on this slave labor. Not just from slave cotton. That's the thing I can easily prove with scientific testing. The composite of cotton over there versus here is very unique, like a fingerprint.

You can't do that with your cell phones and your cobalt and everything else. But it's all mined and managed and produced by the same group of enslaved population. And it's a shame.

And I remember 60 Minutes did a feature, Tyler, and they showed all the children on the side of a mountain with spoons in some cases digging for rare earth. Yeah, and we are supposed to be the ones who are setting the standard. And if the consumption in the United States were to change, if we were to start voting with our dollars, if we were to hold people for a fair amount of ethical sourcing, don't have slaves in your supply chain. And if you do, you should not only be ashamed, you should be fined and hopefully put in jail. But Senator Mayorkas turns a blind eye. This has been over a year of submitting through every portal, every conversation with his assistant undersecretary providing, you know, this is a slow moving ship.

I can track it. You know what? I want you to hear more. Senator Tom Cotton brought up your line of questioning.

Here's more. Mr. Secretary, is enforcing the federal ban on slave produced products and materials from China a top priority for your department? It most certainly is. Why would CBP have told the CEO of Nine Line Apparel this is not a top priority?

That is not a reflection of our prioritization of this work, nor is it consistent with our prioritization of this work. And I must say that the act is an incredibly important statute that Congress passed and I appreciate your leadership in achieving it. It is something that we enforce very, very vigorously and need to do so.

So do you think he's lying? It is a pure definition of a paper tiger. It was almost unanimously passed, which never happens in the Senate. And everyone said we are very anti-slave and there is no enforcement arm. Since this has been enacted, less than half a dozen ships have been stopped. They think less than 50% of the actual Uyghur goods are being stopped and there is no push to the lowest level of enforcement.

There is no prioritization. So this is a perfect example, just like in the southern border, where we say one thing but our actions are completely different. So actions do speak louder and if they were to hold any of these organizations that I've made mention in the past.

Next Level Apparel was the one that I've been testing for quite some time that had been siccing their legal department on me for the last year. And I don't know of anything that's actually happened to them or anyone like them. So I don't think that they are taking it seriously. I think they're just going to continue with these sound bites of we care about securing this other border. We care about stopping the importation of Uyghur goods, but until this individual is removed, until this administration is removed, and we place it with someone who actually cares about following through with the promises the American public wants, this is only going to get worse. So I want you to hear Congressman Michael Waltz on the reason, even though they're trying to impeach him in the House, and they've got to do it this week because they could lose another vote in a special election on Long Island, which could be happening, you know, the final day is tomorrow to vote.

Here's Michael Waltz, Cuff45. Every constituent that I talk to, and it's not just Republican, this has become a national issue and it's become a bipartisan, just an American security issue, we can't have a cabinet officer putting us in this position from a national security standpoint, lying to the American people and lying to Congress about it. He must be impeached and I think we'll get it done Tuesday. Do you think it solves everything if he's impeached? I think it sets a clear message that if you hold a position that's supposed to be supporting and upholding the Constitution of the United States, and you fail to follow through, you should be impeached at a minimum.

You should likely go to jail. I was an army officer and I was charged with following through with the duties and the orders of the President of the United States, as long as they remain constitutional. Then it was my obligation to stand up for the Constitution. We have a border and we are a sovereign nation and I can't think of one country I've ever just stepped across and attempted to do the things that are occurring right here in this country. So respect our border, respect our laws, or be removed from office and hopefully go to jail for your actions.

That's what I hope. I saw this ad, I didn't know anything about this company, that Timu ad. What is Timo?

And you flagged that. That's a Chinese company, that's China's Amazon? It does seem like it's a replacement to Alibaba. It seems like it's the Walmart, the online of slave products. I have not tested their products, but it's hard to imagine bringing those type of products in at those prices without exploiting humans. I don't know how it would be accomplished, and I've been in the textile industry for well over a decade. I've got materials that are sourced from all around the world. We pride ourselves with manufacturing in the United States, but we work all around the world. And the only place to hit those prices is slave labor. That's really it.

There's no way around it. So if people continue to vote with their dollars and buy sheen, and they continue to buy things from the Alibabas of the world, which is a rename of Timu in my opinion, I think that we're just going to continue down this path of talking about being virtuous on our slave phones, driving our slave vehicles, wearing our slave clothes, and patting ourselves on the back. So we need to take actions and vote with their dollars. How do we get recruiting out of the United States? I mean I would love to see some ads, some image ads that show you guys taking the fight in the war on terror. I'd love to see some image ads of you leaving the camouflage for a job in finance that we know happens every day, or a job in education that we know.

Talk about the opportunity that the military gives. I see nothing. People wonder why recruiting is down. They're not even using any of the advertising dollars. Maybe they do stuff with the NFL and that's great.

But where are the image ads we used to see? Well I think they're trying to create a new warrior culture that is non-existent. You want sensitive, soft, kind warriors says no one. If you want me to close with and destroy the enemy, then give me the tools that I require to do so and then support me. But I don't know many people in the military. I'm very close with members of the National Mission Force and individuals who run the highest profile missions. And there's a lack of confidence in that if a hard decision needs to be made at 3 o'clock in the morning, is our commander-in-chief going to be able to do so?

He's barely able to conjugate a sentence in the middle of the day. I don't believe that our members of the armed forces feel confident with our commander-in-chief. And it's hard to market to individuals that you want as warriors with the current climate that's being set. The greatest threat to the military is inclusive nature and racism. I've been in the military since I was a commander repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell. No one cared if there were people who were homosexual in our unit.

It wasn't talked about. It was, alright, Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed. Now can we get back to barrel gunnering and talking about killing bad guys? It's these made up nuances that we need to fix something that's not broken. It makes people not want to join the military.

It wasn't broken. We had the most elite, fearsome fighting force in the world. And then it was taken over by our current commander-in-chief who is a delinquent.

And he assigns matters of national security to absolute idiots. And this is what we get. Tyler, thanks so much. Go support him online, wherever you can. Tyler, thanks so much. We'll keep the word out about this and hopefully Mayorkas will be history and this administration will be out the door. Thank you. Thank you, sir.