This much can be said about the latest gambit by President Donald Trump and his trade team in their persistent endeavors to build a high-tariff wall around the United States: they are becoming more creative in their excuses for applying tariffs as border taxes on imported products.
Their new round of tariffs of up to 12.5 percent, levied on 59 countries and the 27-member European Union, is ostensibly in response to the alleged failure of these countries to enforce bans on forced labor. Superficially, this seems more justified than the president’s usual arbitrary tariff edicts announced on social media. Yet, despite its noble pretensions, this is mostly protectionism in the guise of do-goodism.
To be sure, forced labor is a real and grave global issue. The International Labour Organization estimates that 27.6 million men, women, and children are held in conditions of forced labor around the world, generating $236 billion in profits annually. Much of this abuse of fundamental human rights involves the global supply chains of international trade. For decades, the United States and other trading countries have struggled with how best to address this dark aspect of the overall issue of the nexus between trade and labor, domestically and internationally, without sufficient success. Slavery still exists in the world, and it stains international trade.
It must be acknowledged that this is not the first time the Trump administration has voiced concern about forced labor in trade. The administration has insisted on a ban on the import of goods made by forced labor in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and it has included obligations to forbid the import of goods made by forced labor in trade agreements with Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Taiwan. So, the decision to justify new tariffs for this reason as a consequence of this most recent investigation of alleged unfair trade practices under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 should not come as a total surprise.
But there is scant logic in some of the distinctions the administration has made in doing so. Especially, nothing appears to have been done to set tariffs at different levels for different countries, depending on the seriousness of the alleged human rights violations. Tariffs of 10 percent will be imposed on a group of countries that have supposedly imposed a partial prohibition on imports made by forced labor, while tariffs of 12.5 percent will be applied on a group of countries that have not imposed any legal prohibition at all. But there has seemingly been no attempt to distinguish between these countries based on the extent of their actual imports of products tainted by forced labor.
If justifiable distinctions have been made here based on human rights failures, why is the same tariff of 12.5 percent being applied to imports from China and Switzerland? In addition, why have countries such as Afghanistan, Belarus, and Myanmar—where the United States has identified significant abuses of forced labor—been excluded from these new tariffs? And is it only a coincidence that these new tariffs seem for some reason to add up to sums approaching the previous Trump tariffs that were struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States in its ruling under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and by other federal courts since?
It can, of course, be assumed that the president and his trade team do oppose forced labor. Their record thus far supports that assumption. But all these questions about these new tariffs suggest that they are being applied more as a means of finding a new way to help replace the tariffs that the courts have ruled illegal than as a means of combating the human rights abuses of forced labor.
What is more, how is the United States justified in claiming the heights of the moral high ground globally on this issue and in expressing such disdain for the practices and policies of other countries, given its own mostly disappointing record in countering forced labor in trade?
Yes, the United States prohibits the import of goods made by forced labor. Section 307 of the 1930 Trade Act, in the statute books for nearly a century, prohibits imports made by forced labor, and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act of 2021 restricts imports from China’s Uyghur Autonomous Region unless it is shown that they are free of forced labor. Yet, despite this, an estimated $144 billion in goods made using forced labor enters the US market annually, more than any other country.
Forced labor remains pervasive in American supply chains. In announcing this decision, the Trump administration cited a few dozen actions it has taken to try to halt imports made by forced labor. As members of Congress have asked, though, why have there not been many, many more?
And why does the United States, after nearly a century, continue to refuse to ratify the major international treaty banning forced labor? The Trump administration has portrayed these tariffs as necessary because the alleged failings of the 60 targeted countries undermine the universal aim of eliminating forced labor. The United States, however, is one of only a handful of countries that has not ratified the 1930 Forced Labor Convention of the ILO, which provides that forced labor should be punished as a crime. Historically, this has been because private companies are permitted to profit from prison labor in the United States, which is not allowed by the international convention. Why not end that practice in the United States and sign the global accord? Why should private companies benefit from forced labor by prison inmates?
As a political move, the deceptive cloak of do-goodism in this new round of tariffs will make it more difficult for the defenders of more open trade to oppose them. After maintaining for many years that trade should be conducted in ways more mindful of the labor practices and conditions that are part of it, Democrats will not want to seem to be backing off from that principled stand. And who wants to be accused by Donald Trump of supporting human slavery?
Following public hearings, the tariffs will go into effect, inviting a new round of legal challenges in the courts. But they are likely to do little to reduce forced labor and its presence in the flow of goods in international trade.