On July 23, 2026, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced new tariffs on 60 economies for failing to impose and effectively enforce bans on importing goods made with forced labor. Trading partners that have committed to adopt and enforce such bans face a 10% tariff, among them Canada, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom; those that have not face 12.5%. For certain goods from the EU, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan, the rate is set so the total including the normal tariff comes to 10% or 12.5%. The list covers the top 60 U.S. trading partners, including the European Union and China, and about 99.4% of U.S. imports, according to a USTR fact sheet cited by Time. The tariffs took effect July 24, the day Trump's temporary Section 122 global tariff expired.
Greer framed it as overdue enforcement: “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.” He said the action “will begin to correct what is both a human rights abuse and distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere.” The tariffs follow investigations USTR launched on March 12 at Trump's direction, including consultations with at least 45 of the countries examined, and carry exemptions where products cannot be grown or produced domestically or where the tariff would hurt availability or the domestic economy.
The legal vehicle is what makes this a pattern. The action rests on Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which lets the trade representative, at the president's direction, impose tariffs over unfair trade practices without a new vote of Congress. It is the latest in a series of statutes the administration has turned to as courts ruled against earlier ones: the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs in February 2026; on May 7 the Court of International Trade ruled 2-1 that the 10% Section 122 replacement tariff was unlawful, though it limited relief to the plaintiffs who sued and the tariff stayed in place for most importers until it expired; and the 50% tariffs on Canada announced in July invoked the long-dormant Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. Alan Wolff of the Peterson Institute wrote that the forced-labor tariffs “would represent another case of presidential overreach,” and that the Supreme Court would likely overturn them if they were challenged.
The merits of a forced-labor standard are not the question here. The question is a president who, told by two courts that he lacked the authority he claimed, keeps finding new statutes that let him tax imports without asking Congress (see A Court Forces Trump to Refund $166 Billion in Unconstitutional Tariffs, but Only Businesses Get the Money, U.S. Court of International Trade Strikes Down Trump's Section 122 Tariffs 2-1, His Second Tariff Scheme Blocked in Three Months; Trump Appeals the Following Day and Trump Slaps 50 Percent Tariffs on Most Canadian Goods Over Alcohol, Dairy, and Auto Disputes).
Update (October 2, 2026): the tariffs were challenged in the Court of International Trade on July 24 by spice importer Burlap & Barrel and watch retailer Collective Horology, and on August 3 by a coalition of 25 states, which called the action “arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law” and argued “the Administration cannot use forced labor as a pretext to continue its illegal tariff scheme,” Supply Chain Dive reported.
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version of this entry called Section 301 the “fourth” tariff authority the administration has used and said the Canada tariffs were also a fourth route. Section 301 was already in use (the administration imposed a 25% Section 301 tariff on Brazil earlier in July, Time reported), so the count was removed. It also said the Court of International Trade struck down the Section 122 tariffs without noting that its ruling applied only to the plaintiffs; the entry now says so.