Trump’s USTR Imposes Double-Digit Duties on Dozens of Nations Under Forced Labor Probe
27 Jul,2026
Trump’s USTR Imposes Double-Digit Duties on Dozens of Nations Under Forced Labor Probe
By:Kate Nishimura FM:Sourcing Journal Date: July 23, 2026 6:08pm
The Trump administration is taking “final action” at the direction of the president to impose new tariffs on 60 global economies over their failures to impose and enforce bans on imports made with forced labor.
The freshly minted import taxes, which represent a large building block in the federal government’s effort to reconstruct its tariff-driven trade regime, will cover over 99 percent of imports into the United States market starting on Friday.
Levied under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the tariffs are the result of investigations launched in May by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The probes included two public hearings and the USTR accepted over 2,100 public comments from concerned parties and industry stakeholders before announcing its decision to move forward with the duties on Thursday.
U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer speaks to reporters following a Senate Finance Committee earing on July 22, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Andrew Harnik / Getty Images Ranging from 10 percent to 12.5 percent, the tariffs will impact prominent apparel and textile sourcing locales like China, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam, as well as prominent trading partners like the European Union and the United Kingdom.
The USTR’s federal register notice clarifies that the tariffs will apply to all products from the designated economies except those specifically named. The notice makes mention of textiles 427 times, indicating exemptions across a number of categories and countries.
The notice also proposes a “textile mechanism” which would allow a certain volume of apparel and textiles from specific economies—Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia—to enter the U.S. at reduced tariff rates. These tariff-rate quotas, which will have an initial duration of three years, were designed to “reduce reliance on inputs from other sources that are more likely to contain forced labor inputs,” USTR wrote.
Key words:
reported,considering,selection
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