The Trump administration’s new tariffs targeting countries’ weak enforcement of forced labour import bans represent the “next phase” of policy escalation, trade lawyers have warned.
The US government introduced Section 301 tariffs on July 23, effectively replacing the previous tariff regime that expired today, on more than 60 countries.
Most trading partners will see their tariff rate rise only slightly, as the outgoing 10% Section 122 tariffs are replaced with 12.5% tariffs under Section 301.
The UK, Canada and Mexico are largely unaffected, as they move from one baseline 10% tariff to another.
The move comes as the Trump administration presses ahead with a broader effort to rebuild the tariff regime the Supreme Court struck down in February, when it ruled that the president’s use of emergency powers to impose levies was unlawful.
However, trade lawyers have said the move is designed to be “durable” and could be followed with further increases by the Trump administration.
The announcement represents “the next phase” in Washington’s “months-long effort to replace the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) reciprocal tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February”, said Patrick Childress, a partner at Holland & Knight and former assistant general counsel at the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR).
“The forced labour 301 tariffs are not the end of the story. The 10-12.5% forced labour-related rates are still lower than the now-defunct IEEPA rates for most trading partners,” he said.
“Expect the administration to further increase the overall tariff rates on goods from trading partners to bring them closer to the IEEPA tariff rates the Supreme Court struck down.”
Childress added the “primary tool” for the escalation will be “the yet-to-be-announced Section 301 tariffs related to industrial overcapacity”, and that the US government is expected to “move forward with a proposal for overcapacity 301 tariffs in the next few weeks”.
At the same time, the USTR “crafted the Section 301 forced labour investigation in a way that ensures these tariffs will be with us for the long haul”, the trade lawyer argued.
Trade partners are not only required to adopt the precise legal instrument Washington stipulates, but would also still need “to demonstrate a history of robust enforcement of that law to satisfy the US government’s demands and have its Section 301 tariffs removed”, he said.
“This suggests that no short-term path for country-wide relief from the new Section 301 tariffs will be available.”
Tim Brightbill, co-chair of Wiley Rein’s international trade practice, said businesses around the world want “foreseeability on trade matters”.
He added the Trump administration’s recent actions on Brazil and Canada – which are separately facing threats of higher import taxes of up to 25% and 50% on a variety of goods, respectively – as well as measures targeting generic pharmaceuticals, “suggest that its rollout of various tariff regimes continues to be unpredictable”.
William Bain, head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, which represents over 50,000 businesses across the UK, also said “this is unlikely to be the end of the story on US tariffs for either the UK or the rest of the world”.
Forced labour concerns
There have also been concerns that the new import rules are being used as geopolitical leverage.
Analysis from risk data firm Verisk Maplecroft earlier this month found that enforcement of forced labour was increasingly serving as a “de facto trade control” tool, with US Customs and Border Protection detaining US$3.94bn in shipments on forced labour grounds between June 2022 and February 2026.
Verisk Maplecroft warned that forced labour risk was shifting from a compliance issue to a geopolitical one, noting that the US government’s own investigations into 60 economies’ enforcement records had already laid the groundwork for the kind of tiered tariffs introduced today.
“This raises a practical question for companies: where will enforcement be influenced by geopolitics, not just forced labour risk?” the company’s report said.
Nevertheless, Brightbill said that forced labour remains “a human rights crisis and a serious problem in global supply chains across industries”, and that using Section 301 sends a signal to trading partners to “do more to proactively address this systemic issue”.
