In a report released late Tuesday, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer accused 60 foreign economies of failing to guard against products made with “forced labor,” paving the way for the imposition of new tariffs on their exports to the United States.
The trade representative’s proposed tariffs — which would apply to 99% of U.S. imports and affect virtually every major trading partner, including the European Union, China, Mexico and Canada — would vary depending on whether a given country has or plans to impose prohibitions against the importation of goods made with forced labor. Countries that do have such rules would face a 10% tariff, while those that do not would see a 12.5% tariff.
“The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labor is unacceptable,” Greer said. “This creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field. We will no longer tolerate this disparity.”
Rebuilding the tariff wall: The Trump administration has been looking for ways to revive its tariff policies ever since the Supreme Court rejected the “Liberation Day” levies President Trump rolled out in April 2025 on countries around the world.
In February, the high court ruled that the tariffs Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 violated the separation of powers, sparking a new effort in the administration to find new legal justifications for the higher tariffs that Trump has long called for. If enacted, the new tariffs would be authorized under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which empowers the U.S. trade representative to retaliate against foreign countries whose policies place a discriminatory or otherwise unfair burden on U.S. commerce.
Although the new tariffs may pass muster with U.S. courts, critics are already making it clear they have questions about them. “Washington is desperately searching for new legal grounds to sustain its tariff policy,” Bernd Lange, who leads the European Parliament’s trade committee, said on social media. “Accusing the EU of all places of insufficient action against forced labor is absurd. The EU has adopted the world's most stringent rules against products made with forced labour. This looks very much like trying to make the facts fit a legal justification for tariffs that has already been decided.”