Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a longtime anti-human trafficking advocate, praised the Trump administration’s 2025 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report for exposing countries he said “are actively profiting” from modern slavery.
“I wholeheartedly welcome President Trump’s TIP report of 2025, and I applaud his commitment to protecting victims of sex and labor trafficking and demanding accountability from countries who fail to meet the necessary anti-trafficking criteria outlined in my TVPA,” Smith said in a Sept. 29 statement.
The TIP report — mandated by Smith’s 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) — evaluates global efforts to combat human trafficking. Released annually by the State Department, it ranks countries based on their actions to prevent trafficking, protect victims, and prosecute offenders. In its report, the department defines human trafficking as the exploitation of adults or children through forced labor or commercial sex.
Smith, who has authored several reauthorization bills on trafficking, said the report was “absolutely right to spotlight and criticize those countries that are not only failing to stop human trafficking, but in many cases, are actively profiting from it.”
Smith singled out China and Cuba for state-sponsored forced labor and the “explosion of Southeast Asian scam centers” that are “devastating lives and families around the world — including here in the United States, where traffickers scammed Americans out of over $12.5 billion in 2024 alone.”
He also referenced reports of Russia and Belarus “unlawfully conscripting Ukrainians in occupied territories” to “clear rubble, dispose of corpses, and even fight against their own country” and noted that between 80,000 and 120,000 people in North Korea “remain enslaved in brutal prison and forced labor camps.”
He said the “dereliction and dismissal of human rights” in those countries has allowed modern-day slavery to persist.
Smith also pointed to several countries downgraded in the 2025 report, including Laos and Chad, which he said “shamelessly failed to report, investigate, and/or punish trafficking crimes,” and South Africa and Brazil, which were demoted for “lackluster and inadequate efforts.”
“This report provides a modern blueprint for combatting and preventing human trafficking around the globe,” Smith said, adding that he looks forward to working with President Donald Trump “to hold the most flagrantly offending countries responsible.”
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