PVH Corp, owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, has found itself in a position no company wants to be in: at the centre of a tit-for-tat between the world’s two largest economies. Should other American fashion firms be worried?

On 4 February, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced that PVH and US biotech company Illumina Inc have both been added to its list of “unreliable entities” — companies MOFCOM believes are a threat to China’s national sovereignty, security and development interests. PVH has ostensibly been blacklisted because of its refusal to source cotton from China’s Xinjiang region, where it has been alleged that Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority, are being forced into manual labour (something the Chinese government denies). The US government blocked imports of cotton from Xinjiang in December 2020.