Which countries will face Trump’s new tariffs?
The Trump administration on Thursday announced new tariffs on 60 economies, including the European Union, citing their handling of imported goods made with forced labor.
In a statement, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) said it had investigated major trading partners and found that they failed to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods made through modern slavery.
The tariffs cover more than 99% of US imports and replace a temporary 10% global tariff that was due to expire.
A 10% tariff will apply to countries like Argentina, India, Pakistan and the UK that have adopted or committed to forced-labor import restrictions.
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The EU, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Switzerland will face tariffs of either 10% or 12.5%, depending on the product.
Goods from 38 other countries will be subject to the higher tariff of 12.5%, including China, most of the Middle East, much of Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and Russia.
Exemptions include steel, aluminum, automobiles, civilian aircraft, rare earth minerals and goods covered by the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
The new tariffs took effect just after midnight Eastern Standard Time on Friday, July 24.
Are Trump’s new tariffs really about forced labor?
The USTR noted that the US has banned imports made with forced labor for almost a century, adding that despite international consensus, “the prevalence of forced labor persists worldwide and has even escalated in recent years.”
Washington argues that foreign producers gain an unfair price advantage from the practice and that US workers cannot compete with forced-labor wages.
In reality, many critics and analysts see the move as a legal workaround for US President Donald Trump’s broad tariff program, announced on “Liberation Day,” April 2, 2025, which the US Supreme Court struck down in February.
At that time, Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 to impose the tariffs without congressional approval, but the court ruled that the law does not authorize presidents to impose tariffs on their own.
The new forced labor tariffs were introduced under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a more established trade law that many analysts believe will be harder for courts to overturn.
Does the EU really have a problem with forced labor?
Compared with parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, forced labor isn’t a major issue within the 27-member EU, due to comprehensive labor laws and strong enforcement.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines forced labor as work performed under the threat of penalty and without voluntary consent.
While labor protections in the EU are comparatively strong, many imports still contain raw materials or components linked to forced labor elsewhere.
In December 2027, Brussels will introduce one of the world’s strictest import bans, when no product tainted by forced labor will be allowed to enter, circulate or leave the EU market.
Reacting to the new tariffs, the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, compared the bloc’s labor laws to those of the United States, noting that EU workers have paid vacations and other better working conditions.
Why do critics see the tariffs as a legal workaround?
Some analysts argued that the new tariffs don’t keep to the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling and could be challenged.
“These new tariffs would represent another case of presidential overreach,” Alan Wolff, a former deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), wrote in a blog post ahead of the announcement.
“The world has become accustomed to higher US tariffs. There is no evidence that changing the US rationale for them will materially reduce forced labor in other countries,” Wolff added.
Others said Trump was using forced labor concerns as a pretext, when the share of imports linked to forced labor from most advanced economies is negligible compared with China.
“The tariffs use real concerns about China’s labor practices not as the basis for tariffs against China, but for broad tariffs against most of the world,” Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, wrote on X.
Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, also thinks the tariffs “divert US and allied attention from the trade war we should be fighting,” which he said was cutting reliance on Chinese goods and building “resilient alternative supply chains.”
Trade partners echoed those criticisms, with Brazil calling the tariffs “unjustified” and Australia labeling them “absurd.”
Could Trump use Section 301 for more tariffs?
The administration is already using Section 301 for another investigation into excess manufacturing capacity in 16 major trading partners, including China and the EU. Trade experts expect it could lead to additional tariffs.
During his first term, the same legislation allowed Trump to impose tariffs on China over intellectual property theft and technology transfer. These were expanded under the Biden administration.
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Trump’s team continues to maintain existing national-security tariffs on steel, aluminum, automobiles and other products, under Section 232 of the same Act.
Trump’s first administration imposed 25% duties on steel and 10% on aluminum in 2018, after the US Commerce Department found the low-cost imports threatened US national interests.
During his second term, Trump restored, expanded and increased many of those rates, while adding new tariffs on vehicles, auto parts and copper.
Edited by: Tim Rooks
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