The Trump administration has proposed new tariffs of up to 12.5 per cent on imports from 60 economies after determining they had failed to curb trade in goods made with forced labour, an assertion that was rejected by US trading partners.
The proposal from the US Trade Representative’s office, issued late on Tuesday, comes from a Section 301 unfair trade practices investigation designed to help rebuild US President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs, struck down by a US Supreme Court decision in February.
Despite laws banning them, the products of forced labour are deeply embedded in supply chains across the world. Business leaders said the US move created more confusion for companies trying to police the sourcing of products. “Forced labour concerns all countries and is happening in every sector. No one country is completely exempt – including the US,” Helene de Rengerve, a corporate responsibility official at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. “Singling out some countries just based on trade volumes is questionable and may even be counterproductive.”
USTR proposed 10pc additional duties on imports from Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Taiwan and Britain. The USTR said all had plans or partial schemes in place or had made commitments to address forced labour as part of US trade agreements.
The trade agency said it would impose additional duties of 12.5pc on the remaining 45 countries that it investigated. These include China, India, Nigeria, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand.
“The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labour is unacceptable,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement. “This creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field.”
USTR said it would accept public comments on the proposed tariffs and other remedies through July 6, with a public hearing scheduled for July 7. The new tariffs were proposed with numerous exemptions, including for imports that were already subject to US Section 232 national security tariffs, including autos, steel, aluminium and copper products. The tariffs won’t be applied to Canadian and Mexican imports that comply with the North American trade deal rules of origin.
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