The Cynicism of the Administration’s Proposed Forced Labor Tariffs

In a June 2 report, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) concluded that all 60 economies it had investigated under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 – including the European Union, Hong Kong and Taiwan – were distorting trade by failing to impose and effectively enforce import bans on goods made with forced labor. On this basis, the report proposed new tariffs on their imports, which together constitute around 99.4 percent of all imports into the United States by value. These tariffs would in part replace those that the U.S. Supreme Court found illegally imposed under the International…