The Trump administration has imposed double-digit tariffs on more than 60 countries, using a legal justification that lets the president levy import taxes and other sanctions against countries found to engage in “unjustifiable,” “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” trade practices. The new tariffs announced in recent days take effect just as temporary 10% worldwide tariffs expired, and critics say they’re less about cracking down on forced labor than they are a way to replace those tariffs. The expired tariffs were themselves a temporary replacement for worldwide tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February 2026.
Who Gets Hit First
The countries on the receiving end account for 99% of U.S. imports. They were quick to protest, calling the Trump administration’s claims unfounded and arbitrary, with nations that have vastly different records on forced labor getting the same tariff level. That’s the machinery at work: one office in Washington, a legal formula, and a whole world of producers told to absorb the cost. The U.S. spent four months investigating but gave few details on how it arrived at the tariff rates, which are either 10% or 12.5%.
The tariffs were levied under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 on countries that the U.S. determined had failed “to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.” During President Donald Trump’s first term, he cited Section 301 to impose sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports amid a dispute over the sharp-elbowed tactics Beijing was using to challenge America’s technological dominance. The U.S. is also using 301 powers to counter what it calls unfair Chinese practices in the shipbuilding industry.
What They Call Oversight
The office of the United States Trade Representative said it consulted with all 60 economies under investigation and held two rounds of public hearings, elicited more than 2,100 public comments, and had “engagement” with its trading partners about what they were doing to combat forced labor bans. It didn’t detail its talks with the countries, saying those were confidential. Experts said it is fairly straightforward to investigate whether a country has a ban or not, but it is difficult to determine the government’s exact rationale for each country’s failure to enforce import bans.
Brazil, which faces a 12.5% forced-labor tariff, called the U.S. move “arbitrary and unjustified.” The U.S. “chose to manipulate an issue of great importance to human rights and the struggles of workers worldwide in order to accuse 59 countries and the European Union of unfair practices,” it said in a statement. Australia also questioned the justification for its 12.5% tariff.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrote a Washington Post op-ed calling the new U.S. tariffs unfair and a strategic mistake. In the op-ed, he wrote that “Brazil’s destiny is determined only by Brazilians without external interference, without subservience.”
Who Benefits, Who Pays
The National Council of Textile Organizations protested a mechanism that exempts the Section 301 tariffs for textile and apparel imports from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia based on those countries’ imports of U.S. cotton and textiles. Kim Glas, chief executive of the National Council of Textile Organizations, said, “No other industry has been more disadvantaged by forced labor than the U.S. textile industry, which employs 453,000 workers and has lost 41 plants over the past two plus years.” She added, “We remain strongly concerned that USTR’s textile mechanism will harm the very domestic manufacturers the administration seeks to help.”
The U.S. has two major pieces of legislation related to forced-labor import bans. The Tariff Act of 1930 gave Customs and Border Protection the authority to seize shipments where forced labor was suspected and to block further imports. But it had a big carve-out: If there was “consumptive demand,” meaning there wasn’t sufficient supply to meet domestic demand, imports were allowed regardless of how they were produced. The Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act that took effect in 2016 eliminated that loophole.
In 2021, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act was passed. It blocks imports from China’s Xinjiang region unless businesses can prove the items were made without forced labor. But goods made with forced labor can still make it into the U.S. In 2015, an Associated Press investigation found that slave labor was used in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia. The seafood they caught made its way to supermarkets and pet food providers across the U.S. An AP investigation in 2020 into the $65 billion palm oil industry found labor abuses among an invisible workforce consisting of millions of men, women and children in Asia. The fruit they harvested made its way into the supply chains of major companies, including Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle and Procter & Gamble.
During hearings on the tariffs this month, National Retail Federation vice president Jonathan Gold, representing the business coalition the Joint Association Forced Labor Working Group, said the import bans would have to be much more extensive to work. He said there need to be “clear, measurable benchmarks” tied to tariffs for countries to hit, and that the U.S. should help countries build enforcement programs. Kenya Davis, a partner at the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm, said an effective ban needs a “comprehensive approach” that provides transparency about what the investigations consisted of, along with programs that provide countries aid in enforcing bans.
The whole setup runs through state power, corporate lobbying, and closed-door enforcement, while the people who actually produce the goods sit far from the rooms where the rules get written. The hearings, the confidential talks, the benchmarks, the exemptions — all of it stays inside the apparatus. The workers and communities on the receiving end get the bill.