The United States announced new tariffs of 10–12.5% on dozens of trading partners on Thursday, saying 60 countries will face import duties because they have not done enough to stop goods made with forced labour from entering US supply chains.
The move follows a March investigation and comes after the US Supreme Court struck down many of President Donald Trump’s previous duties in February, leaving the administration to restart a legal and administrative process before any of the new tariffs can be enforced.
The Trade Department framed the tariffs as a response to failures by trading partners to address imports produced wholly or partly with forced labour. The 60 countries named include the UK, the EU, Canada, India and Japan — together they account for almost all goods sold to the United States, a fact that sharpens how far-reaching any enforcement would be.
The investigation that produced the list was launched in March by Jamieson Greer and found that 54 of the 60 countries had not adopted a legal prohibition on importing goods made with forced labour or had not effectively enforced such a prohibition. Greer warned that the gap on enforcement "creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field."
The administration split the list into two duty levels. The Trade Department said it would impose 10% tariffs on imports from Canada, the European Union, Britain, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia and Taiwan, among others. The remaining 45 countries — explicitly including China and India — would face 12.5% duties.
Human rights organisations, while arguing that forced labour exists in places such as China, have questioned whether blanket import taxes are the right tool to stop it. Critics say tariffs can punish entire industries and consumers for practices rooted in complex, often opaque supply chains, and that duties alone may not compel the detailed legal and enforcement reforms campaigners call for.
The investigation’s report also singled out several major partners for failing to enforce prohibitions on forced-labour imports, naming Canada, the EU, Ecuador, Indonesia, Mexico and Pakistan. Those findings sit uneasily with the administration’s blunt instrument: if the problem is weak domestic enforcement inside partner countries, critics ask, how will an American tariff fix that on its own?
A UK government spokesperson pushed back on the suggestion that Britain has been passive. "We're tackling forced labour in the UK and in global supply chains to ensure UK businesses are not complicit in forced labour and human rights violations," the spokesperson said, adding that "We continue to engage regularly with the US administration as part of our negotiations, and have made clear the actions we're taking."
For firms and trading partners, the immediate consequence is uncertainty. The tariffs have been announced but not put into force; the Trump administration must complete procedural steps before they take effect, and those steps create windows for legal challenges, diplomatic negotiations and possible modifications.
The most consequential open question now is procedural: will the administration follow through and formally enforce the tariffs, and if so on what timetable? Until that is answered, importers, exporters and governments face weeks or months of limbo in which the threat of broad tariffs hangs over trade talks and supply-chain planning.
