Forced Labor Tariffs Hit
Readers
The temporary 10% global tariff under Section 122 is gone. As of 12:01 a.m. ET this morning, a new Section 301 duty tied to forced-labor enforcement took its place, covering 60 U.S. trading partners and roughly 99% of imports by value.
Legal authority: Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 — not the Section 122 authority behind the 10% blanket tariff that expired at the same moment. Section 122 duties carried a 150-day clock; Section 301 does not.
Rates: 10% or 12.5%, depending on the country. Most partners land at 12.5%. A smaller group with some forced-labor import prohibitions already on the books — including the UK, Canada, and Mexico — sit at 10%.
Stated rationale: USTR found these countries failed to adopt or enforce bans on goods made with forced labor, which the administration frames as both a human rights problem and a trade distortion.
Exemptions
Goods already subject to Section 232 duties (steel, aluminum)
A long list of agricultural products, plus certain foods, autos, metals, and pharmaceuticals
Raw materials and goods that can't be produced domestically in sufficient volume
Country-specific carve-outs — UK whiskey and certain Malaysian textiles among them
In-transit relief: cargo loaded on a vessel before today and entered for consumption before July 28 is not subject to the new duty. If you have containers on the water, that window is short.
What's still unsettled
The filing doesn't spell out how these duties interact with the recent Canada and Brazil actions. Separately, tariff-rate quotas on textiles and apparel from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Malaysia are due by September 1. And USTR's second Section 301 probe — the one on global manufacturing overcapacity — hasn't been finalized yet.
A Copy of the Federal Register Posting is available at this link:
— The Chain Logic Team
