Trump Invokes Forced-Labor Law to Impose Tariffs on 60 Trading Partners

Today’s Focus

The Trump administration announced late Tuesday that it will impose new tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on goods from about 60 trading partners, citing what U.S. officials describe as inadequate enforcement of bans on forced labor in supply chains, according to reporting by Vox and Reason summarizing a New York Times account of the rollout.

The administration is invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to act against foreign trade practices deemed unfair. Goods from countries the U.S. says lack forced-labor import bans, including China, India, the United Kingdom and Japan, would face the higher 12.5% rate. The European Union, Canada, Mexico and other countries the U.S. says have failed to enforce existing bans would face 10% levies.

Vox reported that the tariffs are scheduled to take effect next month, with exemptions for beef, coffee and critical minerals. The administration’s announcement followed an interagency investigation launched earlier this year into trading partners’ forced-labor enforcement.

This is the administration’s third attempt to build a broad tariff structure. The Supreme Court in February struck down President Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose global tariffs, in a case argued in part by Reason contributor and George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin.

The U.S. Court of International Trade last month invalidated a separate effort that relied on Section 122 of the Trade Act, a temporary balance-of-payments authority. The new Section 301 framework carries similar tariff rates and exemptions to the earlier two efforts, Reason noted.

The European Union already has a forced-labor import regulation set to take effect in late 2027, which Vox cited as one reason critics question whether forced labor is the administration’s true motivation.

The Debate

Supporters argue

White House officials frame the new tariffs as a long-overdue response to a global supply chain riddled with coerced labor, particularly from regions like Xinjiang. Administration trade officials told the New York Times that many U.S. trading partners have weaker import-screening regimes than the United States, which has enforced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act since 2022.

Backers in Congress argue Section 301 is the correct tool because it was designed for exactly this kind of unfair-practice dispute. The statute was used repeatedly during Trump’s first term against China and survived court challenges then, supporters note.

Conservative trade hawks, including organizations like the Coalition for a Prosperous America, have long contended that tariffs are a legitimate lever to push allies toward stronger labor standards and to protect U.S. manufacturers competing against goods produced with coerced workers. They argue a 10% to 12.5% rate is modest compared with the IEEPA tariffs struck down earlier this year, and that the exemptions for beef, coffee and critical minerals show the administration is calibrating the policy to limit consumer harm.

Critics argue

Critics say the forced-labor justification is a pretext to revive a tariff agenda the courts have already rejected twice. Writing at Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin called the rationale “extremely” implausible, arguing it is hard to believe roughly 60 countries, including “numerous affluent liberal democracies,” all enforce forced-labor bans less aggressively than the United States.

Vox noted that the EU’s own forced-labor regulation is already scheduled to take effect next year, undercutting the claim that Brussels is lax on the issue. Democratic lawmakers and free-trade Republicans argue the tariffs will function as a regressive tax on U.S. importers and consumers, not on the foreign governments named in the order.

Legal challengers are already preparing suits. Somin wrote that the new tariffs “seem very similar” in rate and structure to the Section 122 levies the Court of International Trade invalidated last month, suggesting courts may view the Section 301 label as a workaround rather than a substantive change. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several industry groups had opposed the earlier rounds and are expected to weigh in again.

What the experts say

Section 301 has historically required a formal investigation by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and a finding tied to a specific country’s practices, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. CRS analyses of Trump’s first-term China tariffs noted that those actions followed a multi-month USTR probe focused on intellectual property, and that courts gave the executive significant deference because the statute’s text contemplates country-specific responses.

Economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics have estimated that broad tariffs at the 10% to 25% range function largely as taxes paid by U.S. importers and passed to consumers, with Peterson’s Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely projecting in 2024 analyses that a 10% universal tariff would cost the average U.S. household more than $1,700 per year.

On forced labor specifically, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data show that since the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act took effect in June 2022, CBP has stopped more than $3.6 billion in shipments for review, according to agency enforcement statistics. Scholars at the Center for Strategic and International Studies have noted that the EU, Canada and Japan have each moved to adopt or tighten forced-labor import rules over the past two years.

By the Numbers

60: approximate number of countries, plus the European Union, targeted by the new tariffs, according to the New York Times via Reason.
12.5%: tariff rate on goods from countries the administration says lack forced-labor import bans, including China, India, the U.K. and Japan, per the administration announcement.
10%: rate on goods from the EU, Canada, Mexico and others the U.S. says fail to enforce existing bans.
3: number of legal authorities the Trump administration has now used to try to impose broad tariffs (IEEPA, Section 122, Section 301), per Reason.
February 2026: when the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariff regime.
$1,700+: estimated annual cost to the average U.S. household from a 10% universal tariff, per Peterson Institute analysis by Clausing and Lovely.
$3.6 billion: value of shipments stopped for review under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act since June 2022, per CBP enforcement data.