The Tariff Wall's Third Legal Life

On July 24, the temporary 10% global tariffs the administration had imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act expired. The same day, a new set of tariffs took effect — this time under Section 301, and this time citing forced labor — applied to 60 trading partners at rates of 10% or 12.5%. ^[1][2] The handoff was not subtle. Treasury Secretary Bessent had telegraphed it in April: the administration would restore tariffs to their previous levels by early July through more than 75 Section 301 investigations. ^[3] The legal vehicle changed; the wall did not. What makes the forced-labor framing hard to take at face value is not any single inconsistency but the pattern of them. Start with China. In January, UN Special Rapporteurs found that China's state-imposed forced labor targeting Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Tibetans may amount to crimes against humanity, with an estimated 650,000 Tibetans subjected to labor transfers in 2024 alone. ^[4]

In many cases, the coercive elements are so severe that they may amount to forcible transfer and/or enslavement as a crime against humanity. — United Nations Special Rapporteurs

Two months later, the United States reached a preliminary agreement with Beijing to stabilize bilateral tariff levels and create cooperation mechanisms. ^[5] The country the UN identifies as the world's most documented forced-labor offender got a deal. Switzerland, Australia, and South Korea — all of which maintain and enforce anti-trafficking and modern-slavery laws — got tariffs. ^[2][6] USTR Jamieson Greer made the administration's logic explicit, if inadvertently, in March. ^[5]

The president's trade policy hasn't changed, our tools may change, and we're conducting these investigations. — Jamieson Greer

The policy is the constant; the legal justification is the variable. Greer later offered a clearer statement of the actual aim. ^[7]

the levies are “critical” to keeping trade partners engaged in negotiations. — Jamieson Greer

The justification is also tailored to the target. Brazil's Section 301 tariffs, proposed in June, cite digital trade, intellectual property, ethanol market access, and illegal deforestation — not forced labor. ^[8]

I launched the Section 301 investigation to tackle "longstanding and pervasive U.S. concerns with certain of Brazil's trade policies and practices." — Jamieson Greer

The administration picks the hook that fits the country, not the one that fits the evidence. None of this means forced labor is absent from every country on the list. Malaysia's palm oil and electronics sectors, Vietnam's garment industry, Thailand's seafood supply chains, and Bangladesh's textile factories all have documented forced-labor problems. ^[9] China itself is among the 60 economies targeted. ^[10] And Greer's blanket claim that targeted countries do not really enforce their laws runs into awkward facts: Brazil's own federal prosecutors sued JBS and Cargill in April over cattle and soy sourcing from slave-labor vendors. ^[11]

The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Labor has strong evidence that these companies systematically acquired supplies from vendors who subjected workers to conditions analogous to slavery. — Public Prosecutor’s Office for Labor

But the selectivity is the point. The administration is not conducting a global forced-labor cleanup; it is cycling through legal authorities to sustain a tariff regime that two courts have already struck down. The Supreme Court invalidated the IEEPA tariffs in February. ^[12] The Court of International Trade struck down the Section 122 tariffs in May, ruling that routine trade deficits do not meet the legal standard. ^[13] Officials now acknowledge that further legal challenges to the Section 301 regime are inevitable. ^[7] Trump himself described the strategy without pretense after the May ruling. ^[13]

Nothing surprises me, so we always do it a different way. We get one ruling, and we do it a different way. — Donald Trump

The pattern is already visible in miniature. Sri Lanka's president issued a forced-labor import ban to secure a lower 10% tariff rate instead of 12.5% — the tariff functioning not as a sanction for labor abuses but as a lever to extract policy concessions. ^[14]

decades of moral persuasion had failed to remove forced labour from global supply chains — Jamieson Greer

India and South Korea challenged the tariffs at USTR hearings this month, arguing the forced-labor findings lacked factual basis. India noted that the USTR exempted 1,600 products that cannot be produced domestically — an exemption that makes sense if the goal is protecting American industry, but none if the goal is combating forced labor. ^[15] The refunds from the invalidated IEEPA regime have cost $81 billion this fiscal year, including $25.6 billion in June alone, contributing to a $1.367 trillion federal deficit. ^[16] The fiscal pressure to restore the revenue under any available legal authority is substantial. But the administration's own words make the pressure unnecessary as an explanation. Greer said the policy has not changed, only the tools. Trump said they do it a different way when they get a ruling. The forced-labor tariffs are the third legal banner in eight months, and officials are already bracing for the fourth.