On July 23rd, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and the White House announced a new slate of tariffs between 10 percent and 12.5 percent on more than 80 countries, including the EU, Mexico, Canada, India, Australia, Japan, and China. These tariffs are predicted to cover around 99 percent of US imports. 

The tariffs were issued under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the President to take action against foreign countries that engage in unreasonable or discriminatory trade practices. President Trump has previously used this same provision to enact tariffs against China for its use of Uyghur forced labor, with those tariffs surviving multiple court challenges. Many parties have criticized the Trump Administration for using this example to expand tariffs across a myriad of countries.

Greer, U.S. Trade Representative under Trump, justified the tariffs by saying, “The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same.” The United States has some of the strongest forced labor import restrictions of any country as it stands, having prohibited the import of goods made with slave labor for almost a century. Greer pointed to “decades of moral suasion” that had been unable to quell the practice to justify this new hardball approach. However, these new tariffs aren’t solely based on a moral duty. The Trump Administration also argued that foreign producers gain an unfair price advantage from forced labor, leaving U.S. workers unable to keep up. 

In addition, these new tariffs fall closely in line with Trump’s tariff-forward trade policy since the start of his second term. Trump has long complained that U.S. tariffs were too low, campaigning on a transformation of the country’s trade system. His plans suffered a major defeat when his Liberation Day tariffs were struck down by the Supreme Court in February of this year. The replacement was a blanket 10 percent tariff based on Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which had never been used to impose tariffs before. However, a coalition of individuals, businesses, and states defeated this second tariff policy in court, securing its 150-day expiry date. That limit ran out this Friday, leading to the announcement of this new policy minutes after the former expired. Throughout Trump’s second term, his administration has hunted for new policies under which he could levy tariffs, with this being just the latest. The administration has made it abundantly clear that their aim is to pile on tariffs, no matter what policy or avenue they have to use to do it. These latest tariffs had been investigated for months as a possible replacement, chosen because of their resistance to legal action.

The administration has gotten major pushback both at home and abroad for this latest policy. EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas told the press that the U.S. and EU’s forced labor import laws were very similar, adding, “If you compare our ‌labour laws to the ones of the United States, I mean, we have paid vacations, we have very good labour conditions for our employees, so ‌it’s not really grounded.” Countries such as Australia, Brazil, and Norway have called the tariffs unjustified, and said they would work to have them removed. These and many other countries listed under the tariff policy already prohibit forced labor imports as well as having strong labor rights domestically, to which the Trump Administration is set to give them a reduced 10 percent tariff rate. The New York Times reported that administration officials had already reassured multiple foreign governments that their tariff rates would end up being the same as deals negotiated last year. Either way, major markets in Asia dropped overnight when the tariffs were announced, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index falling to lows of 11.4 percent, Japanese Nikkei 225 falling by 3.1 percent, and South Korean Kospi by 6.2 percent. The European markets also fell, but had generally recovered by mid-morning.

Brendan Boyle, top Democrat of the House Budget Committee, cited estimates by the Congressional Joint Economic Committee that U.S. families have had to pay $3,500 more on the same goods under Trump’s tariff policy, with new tariffs only adding more costs. Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, argued, “Forced labor is a real and pervasive problem in our supply chains and demands serious enforcement. It should never be cheapened into a pretext for a tariff policy built on dubious legal theories and personal grievances.” This was backed up by Linda Sánchez of the Tax-Writing Committee, who added, “If he was serious, he would not be applying the same tariff rate to China, one of the worst forced labor abusers in the world, as he does to countries like Australia.”