1. California is Examining Amazon’s Business Practices: In the midst of an ongoing European Union investigation, California’s review focuses at least in part on how Amazon treats sellers in its online marketplace, these people said. That includes Amazon’s practices for selling its own products in competition with third-party sellers, one of the people said. – Read More on WSJ

2. Forced labor: clothing brands have the chance to press China amid post-virus slowdown, rights advocate says. Hundreds of global companies buy cotton and make goods in Xinjiang, China, where over 1 million Uygurs are estimated to be detained, some doing forced labor. – Read More on SCMP

3. RELATED READ: U.S. Lawmakers Introduce New Bill to Cut Down on Imports of Products Made in Chinese Detention Camps. If enacted, the bill will alter existing law in that it will impose a “‘rebuttable presumption’ that assumes that all goods manufactured in Xinjiang are made with forced labor and therefore, banned under the 1930 Tariff Act” – meaning that they will be barred from importation into the U.S. – “unless the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection certifies otherwise.” – Read More on TFL

4. The Future of Retail, Post-Coronavirus: The coronavirus maelstrom could lead to record permanent closures of bricks-and-mortar stores in the U.S. this year, with the possibility of more shutdowns coming as retailers reopen their stores and map out their post-Covid-19 future, experts say. – Read More on WSJ Pro

5. Fashion was broken even before the pandemic: It’s hard to recall a time since the gluttonous 1980s when fashion wasn’t wobbly. But most agree that after the 2008 recession, the industry was never the same. When the economy tanked, Saks Fifth Avenue took the lead in frantically discounting merchandise, and other stores followed. Sales were already nearly incessant in some parts of the business but the recession sparked drastic markdowns of high-end goods. – Read More on the Washington Post