Flanked by an American flag and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had just introduced her on stage, Ivanka Trump told an audience gathered for a ceremony to unveil an annual report of human trafficking that shining a light on these human-rights abuses is a high priority of the administration. “As a mother, this is much more than a policy priority,” she said in her signature whisper. “It is a clarion call to action in defense of the vulnerable, the abused, and the exploited . . . Let us celebrate the heroes that continue to shine a light on the darkness of human trafficking.”

Human rights have not been a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s foreign policy, to say the least. But Ivanka Trump has pushed to put human trafficking on the agenda, and it has been one of her most effective forays into policy. In February, she and her father hosted human-rights organizations at the White House to talk about the issue, and in May, members of Congress and several N.G.O.s joined her to discuss upcoming legislation. On her father’s first trip abroad, on which she joined him, she participated in a focus group in Rome where she met with a Vatican-affiliated organization and met privately with a few women who had survived trafficking.

But Ivanka Trump is a very complicated messenger for these issues. On Tuesday evening, just hours after the human trafficking ceremony with Tillerson, the Associated Press published a report detailing alleged human-rights abuses at a Chinese factory that manufactured items for Ivanka Trump’s brand and other fashion lines. According to the report, based on conversations with one current and two former employees at the Ganzhou Huajian International Shoe City Co., workers often faced 17-hour days with just two days off each month, impossible-to-meet quotas, and verbal and physical abuse. Last year, relations allegedly reached a low point, with a manager thwacking an employee on the head with a high-heeled shoe. (The Huajian Group denied all allegations to the AP, calling them “completely not true to the facts, taken out of context, exaggerated.”)

The revelations came to light after three men who worked for China Labor Watch, a New York-based group that monitors factory labor violations, were investigating conditions at the factory and subsequently detained and accused of illegally recording what they witnessed in order to steal commercial secrets. The men were released on bail on Wednesday. The organization said it has a video it claims was recorded inside the factory in May of a manager threatening a worker for the way the employee arranged shoes. “If I see them f---ing messed up again, I’ll beat you right here,” the manager apparently yelled, according to the AP.

China Labor Watch sent the video to Ivanka Trump, though it received no response. Her spokeswoman had no comment.

Abigail Klem, the brand’s president, told the AP that it hasn’t had products made in the factory since March and that “the integrity of our supply chain is a top priority and we take all allegations very seriously.”

Ivanka Trump stepped down from her eponymous line in January, before she took a role in her father’s administration, in order to first avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest and later comply with federal ethics guidelines once she became an official government employee. She appointed Klem to run the brand, though she still has a financial stake in the business and retains an ultimate veto power over deals that could create a conflict. Her brand is not the only one that produces goods in the factory. China Labor Watch found that Ann Taylor, Nine West, and the Camuto Group, which makes shoes for Jessica Simpson and Tory Burch, among others, have been customers. None of them, however, are First Daughters and senior White House officials advocating for “a clarion call to action in defense of the vulnerable, the abused, and the exploited” on stage at the State Department as a voice of the Trump administration.

Almost immediately after her father took office, Ivanka took the issues she had spent a decade marketing and turned them into a policy agenda. Before her father was inaugurated, she started calling lawmakers to talk about childcare tax credits, and once they got into the West Wing, she led roundtables on human trafficking and others focused on female entrepreneurs and increasing girls’ participation in science and technology fields.

But the multiple lenses through which Ivanka Trump is viewed complicate both her work in the West Wing and the company she left behind. And the ethics laws governing her as a federal employee and the scrutiny around her make it harder to have a hand in her private business.

Some theorized that Ivanka Trump’s role in the White House would burnish her brand. But serving as the very public face of the Trump administration human-rights initiatives while at the same time serving as the face of a brand that used a factory that allegedly flagrantly violated labor laws is an impossible situation, as Tuesday showed. Being the brander that she is, Ivanka herself knows this better than anyone.