The Trump administration proposed sweeping new tariffs on 60 economies on Tuesday, seeking to revive its protectionist trade agenda following a decisive Supreme Court defeat.
The move, driven by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, targets countries accused of turning a blind eye to goods produced with forced labor and signals that the White House has no intention of retreating from its aggressive tariff posture even as legal battles continue to reshape the boundaries of presidential trade power.
The action is rooted in Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which authorizes the president to impose levies to counter unfair foreign trade practices harming U.S. commerce. By anchoring the proposed tariffs to this statute, the administration is deliberately charting a legally sturdier course than the one that led to its earlier undoing.
The proposal is the latest finding from a Section 301 unfair trade practices investigation, released as the Trump administration seeks to rebuild its emergency tariffs, which were struck down by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in February.
That ruling invalidated much of what President Trump had branded his “Liberation Day” tariffs, a sweeping set of country-specific levies that had roiled global markets. In response, Trump imposed 10% global baseline duties under Section 122, which are also set to expire in July.
Tuesday’s announcement effectively gives the administration a new vehicle, one grounded in documented trade investigations rather than emergency powers, to pursue many of the same economic objectives.
The U.S. is proposing new tariffs of at least 10% on imports from 60 trading partners in President Donald Trump’s biggest move to rebuild his protectionist wall since his earlier levies were struck down by the Supreme Court.
The USTR drew a sharp distinction between two categories of offenders. A 10% duty rate would apply to imports from Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Britain, countries that adopted some form of prohibition on forced labor imports but have not enforced it effectively. The remaining 45 countries would face the steeper 12.5% rate.
The report did not shy away from the human scale of the problem it cites as justification. The USTR cited a UN International Labour Organization estimate that as of 2021, 27.6 million people were engaged in forced labor worldwide. It defined forced labor broadly as work extracted from a person under threat of penalty and without that person’s voluntary participation.
Among the many products flagged as prone to involving forced labor were rice imported from Myanmar, tobacco from Malawi, beef from Brazil, and cotton and polysilicon from China.
The U.S. has long alleged that goods produced in China’s Xinjiang region, home to the predominantly Muslim Uyghur population, carry the taint of state-sponsored coercion. Beijing has consistently denied those allegations.
USTR Jamieson Greer made little effort to soften the administration’s rhetoric. “The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labor is unacceptable,” he said in a statement. “This creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an uneven playing field. We will no longer tolerate this disparity.”
The statement was designed to frame a legally and diplomatically complex action in blunt, domestic terms, positioning the tariffs not as a foreign policy maneuver but as a defense of the American workforce against an unfair global economic order.
The USTR said it would exempt from the tariffs several products, including energy, rare earths, and certain other metals, beef, coffee, certain fruits and vegetables, pharmaceuticals, organic chemicals, and aircraft parts. Goods from Canada and Mexico that comply with the existing North American free trade framework will also be spared, as will certain textiles and apparel.
Analysts note that the impact of the proposed tariffs will likely be further softened by significant exemptions on goods, including electronics and artificial intelligence-related products.
Nick Marro, a principal at the Economist Intelligence Unit, noted that while the Supreme Court setback slowed down the tariff timeline, it has not neutralized the president’s agenda and expects further investigations and tariff announcements to follow as preparation for renewed trade negotiations.
The USTR said it would accept public comments on the proposed tariffs and other remedies through July 6, with a public hearing scheduled for July 7. The formal rulemaking process provides a brief window for affected industries and foreign governments to register their objections, though trade experts note that this administration has shown limited appetite for reversing course based on public feedback alone.
The forced labor investigation is also not the only front on which the USTR is advancing. The trade agency is also expected to soon unveil the findings of another major Section 301 probe into the buildup of excess industrial capacity in 16 trading partners, including China.
And just one day earlier, the USTR proposed a 25% duty on many Brazilian goods as a result of a separate Section 301 investigation into Brazil’s digital trade practices and preferential tariffs.
Taken together, the actions paint a picture of an administration methodically constructing a new tariff architecture, one designed to be legally durable enough to withstand the kind of judicial scrutiny that dismantled its earlier efforts.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Trump administration’s proposed tariffs on 60 economies over forced labor failures are less about human rights and more about rebuilding a trade war machine.
After the Supreme Court struck down its earlier “Liberation Day” tariffs, the White House has found a legally sturdier weapon in Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, using forced labor concerns as both a moral argument and a legal shield.
With rates between 10% and 12.5% targeting virtually every major U.S. trading partner, including China, the EU, Canada, and the UK, this is the Trump administration’s most significant attempt yet to resurrect broad-based tariffs through the back door, and the world’s largest economies are once again squarely in its crosshairs.
