USTR Unveils Forced Labor Tariffs on 60 Partners
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- USTR (Jamieson Greer) announced new tariffs on 60 trading partners effective Friday, ranging from 10% to 12.5% over forced labor concerns, replacing a 10% global duty that expires the same day after its 150-day statutory life runs out.
- China, Japan and India face the higher 12.5% rate as economies deemed to lack sufficient forced labor prohibitions, while Canada, the EU and the UK receive the lower 10% rate for having such prohibitions in place.
- Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 is the legal vehicle Greer tapped, which former US trade official Ryan Majerus says gives officials "more flexibility than people realise" to modify duties based on new developments — deliberately engineered to outlast court challenges.
- The Trump administration is separately investigating 16 economies over excess industrial capacity, with trade lawyer Greta Peisch noting this layered approach maintains leverage by sustaining the threat of further, country-specific duties ahead.
- Goods under USMCA and those already facing sector-specific tariffs on steel and aluminum are exempt from the new framework, per US officials.
- Trump ordered a separate 50% tariff on many Canadian products this week citing Ottawa's "discriminatory treatment" of American alcohol, autos and dairy — effective in a month and relying on an untested legal provision, a move the Atlantic Council's Josh Lipsky reads as a signal that existing US tariff deals "are still fragile."
Why it matters: The 12.5% tier singles out China and Japan specifically while Canada and the EU get only 10%. Tapping Section 301 rather than the struck-down emergency authorities builds duties designed to survive court challenges through Trump's term. With separate 50% Canadian tariffs and 16-economy industrial-capacity probes, this is a multi-front rebuild after February's Supreme Court loss.
