{"id":708077,"date":"2026-07-24T01:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T01:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/708077\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T01:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T01:55:13","slug":"us-imposes-tariffs-on-dozens-of-trade-partners-over-forced-labour-imports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/708077\/","title":{"rendered":"US imposes tariffs on dozens of trade partners over ‘forced labour’ imports"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US is imposing new tariffs on around 60 trading partners accounting for the vast majority of its imports over claims they failed to properly stop forced labour. <\/p>\n

The duties, ranging from 10% to 12.5%, target key economic partners \u2013 including the UK, China, EU, Canada, Japan and India. They come in on Friday, as a temporary 10% tax on foreign goods introduced earlier this year expires.<\/p>\n

The move is the latest escalation in the global trade war reignited by US President Donald Trump when he returned to office last year.<\/p>\n

The US Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that many of the tariffs imposed globally under emergency powers were illegally enacted. <\/p>\n

So the president has since sought other legal avenues to pursue his flagship trade policy.<\/p>\n

It was last month that the White House first proposed a series of 10-12.5% duties on goods<\/a> arriving to American shores from dozens of countries over concerns they were not doing enough to tackle forced labour.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, acting under Trump’s direction, said those duties would now take effect.<\/p>\n

“Today’s action will begin to correct what is both a human rights abuse and distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere,” his statement said.<\/p>\n

Greer invoked Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which governs US trade enforcement of practices that burden or restrict American commerce.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week the Trump administration invoked a different statute, Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, to impose 50% tariffs on products from Canada.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the Office of the US Trade Representative said the latest tariffs were being imposed on partners “for their failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labour”.<\/p>\n

The new duties apply to the top 60 US trade partners covering 99.4% of US imports, it added.<\/p>\n

The office said Trump in his second term had made adoption of a ban on imports made with forced labour a “critical” part of reciprocal trade agreements with other nations.<\/p>\n

It said so far 10 trading partners had agreed to enact such a ban in these agreements, and other countries had enacted bans in response to its investigations in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Trading partners that have “made commitments to adopt, and effectively enforce” bans on forced labour imports will be subject to a 10% tariff, while those that have not will have the higher 12.5% rate, the office added.<\/p>\n

Greer said in his statement he was “encouraged by the trading partners who have moved quickly to adopt forced labour import prohibitions, and look forward to ensuring their effective enforcement”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US is imposing new tariffs on around 60 trading partners accounting for the vast majority of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-708077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}