President Donald Trump has unveiled a fresh wave of double-digit import duties on dozens of international trading partners, filling the void left as short-term worldwide tariffs introduced earlier this year expired on Friday.

The newly enacted levies, ranging between 10% and 12.5%, apply to goods originating from 60 nations that together represent roughly 99% of total US imports.

According to the Trump administration, the targeted countries failed to implement or enforce adequate prohibitions on merchandise produced using forced labor.

Emphasizing the rationale behind the action, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer stated: "The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century and enforces it strictly. It is time for our trading partners to do the same."

These new measures replace temporary 10% global tariffs that expired at 12:01 am Friday.

Those interim duties were established following a Supreme Court ruling in February that determined Trump lacked statutory authority to execute his previous broad-spectrum tariffs under emergency powers.

To establish the updated trade barriers, the White House turned to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a legal mechanism allowing the president to penalize foreign nations engaged in unfair or unreasonable trade practices.

Trump previously relied on this same authority during his initial presidential term to place tariffs on Chinese products.

Simultaneously, administration officials are investigating whether 16 countries have engaged in industrial overproduction that harms domestic manufacturing.

Because those nations account for approximately 70% of US imports, additional tariffs could be introduced once the inquiry wraps up.

Trump maintains that elevated import duties are essential to reinvigorate American manufacturing.

Last year, he overturned decades of bipartisan US policy favoring lower trade barriers and economic globalization by applying duties on goods from nearly every country, framing America's persistent trade deficit as a national emergency.

However, the Supreme Court subsequently invalidated the emergency statute used to justify those sweeping tariffs, requiring the federal government to issue refunds to importers who had paid the duties.

The administration initially outlined the forced labor-linked tariffs last month. Since that announcement, several foreign governments took steps to tighten enforcement mechanisms and subsequently qualified for lower tariff tiers, a senior administration official noted.

Illustrating this shift, India's prospective tariff rate was originally designated at 12.5% but was brought down to 10% after Indian authorities strengthened their domestic enforcement against forced labor imports, according to the official.

Certain key commodities, including crude oil, natural gas, and fertilizer, have been granted exemptions from the new import taxes. Furthermore, merchandise that satisfies duty-free criteria under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) remains exempt.

The regulatory shift prompted criticism from foreign allies and domestic lawmakers alike.

Representative Richard Neal, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, criticized the administration for using human rights issues as a pretext, stating: "Forced labor is a serious issue that deserves strong enforcement, not to be used as a justification for questionable tariff policies."

In South America, Brazil—which faces a 12.5% tariff rate—condemned the measure as "arbitrary and unjustified," signaling plans to trigger its national reciprocity law to enact retaliatory duties on US products while also mounting a challenge before the World Trade Organization.

Chile, also hit with a 12.5% duty, asserted that its domestic labor protections remain robust, maintaining that the US decision was unsupported by evidence gathered during the investigation.

Under US trade law, import tariffs are paid directly by domestic firms importing foreign products.

Because those companies routinely pass added expenses along to end consumers through higher retail prices, concerns are growing that the new duties could accelerate inflation ahead of the November midterm elections.

While human rights organizations expressed skepticism regarding the administration's underlying motives, several acknowledged that trade bans can be an effective instrument to combat forced labor.

The International Labour Organization estimates that roughly 27.6 million individuals globally were subjected to forced labor conditions in 2021.

Martina Vandenberg, founder of The Human Trafficking Legal Center, remarked that import restrictions can serve as a potent tool against forced labor, but urged that they should be implemented incrementally to grant foreign governments time to build robust regulatory enforcement, adding: "Our concern is that import bans may exist only on paper without proper enforcement."

In Ottawa, Canadian officials indicated that the latest US trade action was expected. Canada-US Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc noted that Canada shares Washington's goal of removing forced labor from international supply chains and affirmed that bilateral discussions on the matter will continue.

Trade analysts further observed that the threat of new tariffs has already motivated several jurisdictions, including India, to tighten anti-forced labor regulations, while upcoming European Union regulations set to take effect next year are expected to place further compliance pressure on global supply chains.

Source: AP