WASHINGTON — Federal officials announced Wednesday they want to place additional tariffs on products from numerous countries after investigating allegations that imported goods were manufactured using forced labor.
According to a report from the U.S. Trade Representative, nations including Canada, Mexico, Taiwan and the United Kingdom would see 10% additional tariffs imposed for reportedly not properly enforcing bans on forced labor imports.
Higher tariffs of 12.5% would target China, Japan, India, South Korea, Brazil and Switzerland, along with many other nations.
“The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labor is unacceptable. This creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field,” USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer said in a statement.
Greer also stated that “each of our trading partners must do more to ensure that trade does not perversely encourage and entrench forced labor globally.”
The proposed tariff increases won’t go into effect right away, as they must first go through public comment periods and additional review processes.
Officials used Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to conduct their investigation into countries’ alleged failures to block imports of products made through forced labor. This approach allows U.S. President Donald Trump to work around Supreme Court restrictions on his tariff authority.
According to the report, forced labor means “work or service exacted from a person under the menace of any penalty for its nonperformance and for which the worker does not offer himself voluntarily.”
In February, the Supreme Court determined that Trump had exceeded his presidential powers when he used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 to place broad tariffs on U.S. trading partners.
