1.Subsidiary of world’s largest shirt maker put on U.S. blacklist over Xinjiang ties: The U.S. Commerce Department announced on July 20 that it had added a subsidiary of one of the world’s largest contract shirt makers and 10 other companies to an export blacklist over their supply chain ties to Xinjiang, where Muslim ethnic minorities are pushed into a forced labor factory system. – Read More on Axios

2. RELATED READ: A slew of recent scandals shows that major fashion and apparel brands’ efforts to police their supply chains are not working. For years, fashion and apparel brands, alike, have promised to police their supply chains in order to identify and root out unsafe labor conditions and abuse, particularly in the wake of the Rana Plaza tragedy in 2012, but good data on the workings of multi-national brands’ supply chains is difficult to come by. – Read More on TFL

3. Investor Appetite for Tech Buyout Funds Continues Despite Pandemic: The pandemic has bolstered the tech sector’s appeal by accelerating technology-driven trends, including a greater reliance on e-commerce and a shift to cloud computing, as more people shop and work from home. Investment firms that back companies in this space are well-positioned to benefit. – Read More on the WSJ

4. Will Fashion Struggle to Recruit and Retain Diverse Leaders? Though fashion’s black Instagram squares have now been buried by more quotidian posts, most statements made a month back included promises to hire more people of color. The question now, however, as an already paltry pool of Black and Latinx leaders in particular seems to be growing smaller rather than expanding, is: will fashion be able to attract the diverse candidates it has vowed to bring on? – Read More on Sourcing Journal

5. Goldman Sachs Forecasts Acceleration In eCommerce Sales: Goldman predicts that online shopping will expand by 19 percent each year during the next three years to come, which marks a rise from its past forecast of 16 percent. eCommerce penetration rose to more than 40 percent in May from 16 percent of retail spending domestically in the first quarter of 2019. The firm noted that “traditional retailers” such as Kroger and Target notched “triple digit growth” in online shopping revenues and eCommerce platforms such as Etsy and Alibaba saw “surging demand.” – Read more on PYMNTS

6. Blackstone’s Earnings Rebound with Market Surge: About 80% of Blackstone’s existing real-estate portfolio has been resilient to the virus, including its significant holdings of warehouses used by e-commerce companies, Chief Financial Officer Michael Chae said on a call with analysts. – Read More on the WSJ