We Can Fight Modern Slavery Susan Ariel Aaronson February 09,
2007 Susan Ariel Aaronson teaches at the George Washington
University School of Business and is the author (with Jamie
Zimmerman) of Trade Imbalance: The Struggle to Weigh Human
Rights Concerns in Trade Policymaking. Two hundred years ago ,
both the United States and Great Britain banned trade in slaves.
But that was not the end of slavery: Britons and Americans alike
were complicit in an economy built on slaves up until the Civil
War. Today, even as many of us look back on that history in
revulsion, modern-day Americans are still complicit in slavery.
We buy a wide range of goods, from chocolate to cars, that
include ingredients or components from the hands of forced or
even slave labor. We also invest in companies that—often
unintentionally—perpetuate slavery. Bloomberg News reported in
November 2006, for example, that many companies, including
Toyota, GM and Frigidaire use materials that start with slave
labor in Brazil. Americans tend to respon